Magic movements

Raise, plant, hold, put, turn, raise, plant, try to feed ... Valery Panyushkin - about where to get the strength in endless care of the lying patient and why this is necessary to study

There was no stretcher in the ambulance that came to my mother. My father and I carried my mother in my arms. Mom was unconscious. Neither my father nor I would have enough strength to carry my mother alone. And how to carry a person together without a stretcher, we did not know. They tried it on the blanket - it did not work. We carried her in a chair.

Having passed two staircases, we completely exhausted. They put a chair with mom on the landing to rest. A neighbor came to the noise. Further, we carried my mother already the three of them, but still we could not go without a vacation more than two staircases.

And how to put a person unconscious inside a medical van, we also did not know. Without a chair? Together with a chair?

Mom had a stroke. But in the hospital it turns out that this stroke is only one of the symptoms of the brain tumor. We had four years ahead - physical exercises.

My mother was dying of glioblastoma for almost five years. There were difficult periods, there were periods easier. After the operation, my mother even learned to walk and speak for a while. But the last year she lay a layer, without reacting to anything.

And all these years I remember how to drag weights. Mom was a weight.

I do not remember that I had time and strength to sit with my mother, talk to her, hold her hand, read out loud her beloved Pushkin. It seems to me that I only did that I tossed my mother on the bed. To change, remake the linen, wash - all these simple operations were given with incredible labor and took me all the time when I was not at work.

And then, when my mother completely stopped responding to the outside world, we also had the problem that we did not know how to feed it. How to cram into a person even children's fruit puree if a person does not swallow?

I am ashamed to remember this, but I took my mother’s death with relief. Woe covered me a few days later, when I rested a little. And yes, I hired a nurse, and the last month of my mother’s life we ​​spent at all with her in the hospice. All the same, I remember my mother’s illness and death not as a farewell to the closest person, but as exhausting powerlifting.

Valery Panyushkin with mom Svetlana Viktorovna, wife Inna and son Vasya photo: From a personal archive

A few years later, I almost accidentally ended up in courses where physical therapists were taught to move. This is such a term - “movement”: the ability to perform with immobilized patient any household and medical manipulations as if the patient weighed not one hundred kilograms, but would be a three -kilogram baby.

Young listeners of the courses asked me if I want to work with them a model. I lay down on the couch, completely limp and pretended to be paralyzed. What was my surprise when thin girls, weighing no more than fifty kilograms, began to move me. I was put on a couch, transferred from the couch to a wheelchair, from a stroller to a bath, from a bath - back to a stroller and a couch.

The teacher's teacher stood nearby and only explained to the audience where I have the center of gravity and how it is better to take me, so that it was reliable, not painful and not humiliating.

It turned out suddenly that there is a million devices to move. There is a rotating disk to turn the patient 90 degrees, transplanting from bed to stroller. There is a lift to put in a bath and pull it out of the bath. There are sliding sheets to change the bed under the patient without lifting the patient from the bed. And if the patient’s legs are wrapped with sliding sheets, then the pants are worn in one movement.

I lay, pretended to be paralyzed and thought that I would have to own all these skills when my mother was paralyzed. How much these skills would facilitate my care for her. How much free time and effort would have remained for me for tender chatter with my mother and reading Pushkin.

Having worked one day with a paralyzed model, I left. A day after my departure at the courses, a block of lectures and practical classes devoted to feeding began. I still do not know how to feed a paralyzed patient, and the listeners of those courses know. The only trouble is that these courses were unique and were held in St. Petersburg only once and only for forty people.

But the school "Attention and care" will work constantly. This school was deliberately established by the charity funds “Live” and “Live Now” to train professional sidelines and just people who need to care for an immobilized relative. In these two funds, it is known how catastrophically there are not enough specialists in Russia who have the skills of moving, feeding and caring for paralyzed patients.

Unfortunately, any of us can face the lack of such specialists, cores and physical therapists. Tomorrow in your house, a immobilized loved one may also be in your house. And believe me, when my mother is paralyzed, I want to be a loving and caring son, and not a tired powerlifter with a torn back.

Believe me - the school "attention and care" is very necessary. Your little donation, your regular contribution will allow the school to exist. And I sincerely wish you to never know how important it is.

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