Reply To: Looking for Adult with GBS to help with assignment!

Thera-putty and Thera-bands are excellent (and inexpensive) rehab aids. I used them at home as well as in rehab units. Two grab bars in the bathroom at home were absolutely essential for me. I prefer them in vertical orientation. Also, a seat in the shower. I still use the bars but not the seat, even though I don’t actually need them.

I have a sliding board which was essential in the rehab hospitals, but by the time I got home I no longer needed it. I forget the brand, but it is the thin, laminated one with a handhole crosswise at each end and a friction pad at one end of the underside. The tapers are long at each end and come to a fairly thin edge. This one is the best, without question.

A walker and (later) a cane, of course. I used my cane for more than a year after going home. A patient with legs barely strong enough to use a walker or cane, and with fairly good arm strength, should know how to get up from the floor or ground using only the walker (or cane). No therapist showed me the technique — I figured it out myself.

True wheelchair (not bicycle) gloves, with padding. I used mine with my cane long after I was out of the wheelchair. I found them useful for gripping hand railings that were wet and slippery. Again, I forget the brand (I lost them, alas), but they were a sport model for wheelchair athletes.

A good shoehorn is useful, but the most useless thing I ever saw was a thing ostensibly designed to put on socks. I threw it out.

I used small dumbells to get my arm strength back. Must work triceps as well as biceps.

The thing I liked best when I reached outpatient rehab was a heavy, but soft, ball about six inches in diameter. Just playing catch with this is good exercise.