I have joined this forum as a carer to my mother in law who has primary progressive MS. She is at the stage where mobility is becoming an issue and she is falling frequently.
We have been addressing areas in her purpose built home that have become difficult but some of the falls are unpredictable.
Getting her up when she falls is getting particularly difficult and so we have invested in a seat that you can raise someone from the floor but even that is tricky for one person to do.
Please could anyone share how they deal with recovery from a fall? Any tips or tricks would be most welcomed and any other ideas for fall prevention would also be great.
If you haven’t already, I would suggest getting an Occupational Therapist to take a look at your MiL in her home and come up with suggestions that minimise risk. The easiest fall to recover from is the one that didn’t happen, so prevention is key here.
Thank you for this, we have had the OT visit along with someone else to advise about making things easier in her home but this was before she was having so many falls so it might be a good time to ask for another visit.
Yes has been using a rollator of the last eight years or so to get about. She has switched away from using it now to a walking frame as she has trouble with the brakes on the rollator (lacks the strength to pull/push them).
The frame appears safer now but it is a bit of a catch 22 situation as she now has to grip it and lift to move.
Hi JohnW. In his mid 90s my Dad used to have a good number of falls. Picking him up was difficult- he was either a dead weight or would panic a bit and push against the helping hands. We sometimes resorted to using a blanket or sheet to drag him to the nearest chair and somehow or another got him onto the seat. He lived on his own so we a) installed cameras around his house to keep an eye on him and b) got him a falls pendant that was linked to a service that would call him on his pendant to ask if he was OK and also called a series of numbers in turn : neighbours, his nearest child and , if necessary emergency services. One of his neighbours was a retired nurse who encouraged us to call for an ambulance and get Dad checked over every time he had a fall. We tended to do this only when it looked as if he had a ‘hard’ fall . The ambulance para medics would check him over . Falls are a big problem and I’m afraid that we didn’t find an easy answer. Good luck and all the best