HOW BOTTOMS-UP HAS HELPED MY LIFE:

But it wasn’t until about 9 years later that I truly experienced the worst part of my paralysis.  I had been warned from the first day of my rehabilitation about pressure relief and the danger of skin breakdown, but I was very fortunate in my skin tolerance during those first years after my accident.  I didn’t have any problems with pressure sores in my sitting area until my 3^rd year of law school, and I was forced to have skin flap surgery 4 weeks after I graduated law school.

All of the doctors, nurses, and therapists told me repeatedly to be very careful with my skin when I was recovering from the surgery, as I didn’t have as much healthy tissue in that area as I had before.  I didn’t listen to a word they said—for 9 years, I had sat for hours and hours without any pressure relief at all, and I had no intention of spending any more time in the bed than I had to.  They stressed to me the importance of building up my sitting time gradually, but I had already spent a month in a hospital bed, and I was determined to get on with my life.

Well, it took some time, but I was proven wrong.  For the next year, I battled a countless number of pressure wounds.  I resisted the therapists’ insistence that I recline in my wheelchair at least every 30 minutes for pressure relief, and I started a terrible roller-coaster ride—sitting for a short period of time without reclining, having a full-fledged skin breakdown in a matter of days, and being totally confined to my bed while the sore healed.  After the area was healed, I would sit back up again, stubbornly ignoring the medical advice of my doctor, and this pattern continued for over 7 months.

All of this was excrutiatingly painful for me, as I was so accustomed to being active and involved in life.  I was devastated at the thought of having to recline all of the time; I mean, wasn’t I conspicuous enough in this power wheelchair without having to turn upside down every half hour?  How could I ever be a lawyer or get married?  I finished high school and graduated college without ever doing a weight shift—why was this happening to me now?

At one point, I got so aggravated with these pressure sores and having to go to bed to get them healed, I decided to just sit up anyway and pretend those bleeding wounds on my backside were nothing to worry about.  Big mistake.  Those small areas that would heal in a week deteriorated to a huge, gaping hole that required emergency medical attention.  I had to stay in the bed for 3 months to heal that area, and after enduring that torture, I was ready to do whatever it took to be able to sit in my wheelchair on a regular basis.  I went back to the hospital where I had my flap surgery with a whole lot of humility.  I had finally realized that they weren’t trying to ruin my life in telling me how to manage my skin; they were giving me sound medical advice based on their experiences in treating pressure relief for thousands of patients just like me.

I cannot say that living in a wheelchair is easy, but it is so much better than being confined to your bed.  That’s why I try not to complain about my disability, as I learned the hard way that there are so many things that are much worse than not being able to walk.  So for over 14 years now, I have been reclining every 30 minutes, and I take a break during the middle of each day for about 2 hours in my black leather recliner.  Although I have a few setbacks occasionally, I generally have a normal, manageable lifestyle now.

And as to my dreams of being an attorney and getting married, I am proud to say that I have been blessed with a legal career and a wonderful husband.  I am very, very active, but I still have to be diligent in avoiding skin problems.  My dilemma now, however, is that I am so very busy that I cannot remember to recline!

That’s when my wonderful husband came to my rescue—he invented the Bottoms-Up Weight Shift Reminder/Timer to help me with my pressure relief, and this timer has improved my quality of life immensely.  My husband knows better than anyone how I have to manage my skin tolerance, and now I have a hands-free method of ensuring that I am not sitting too long.  With a full-time law practice and an equally hectic personal life, it is so hard to keep checking the clock when you have 10 million other things on your mind… And I am a quadriplegic with only limited use of my arms and no use of my hands, so I can’t manipulate a timer to coordinate my weight shifts.  My Bottoms-Up does the work for me!

In the 3 years that I have used the Bottoms-Up, it has become an absolute necessity for me.  This device is placed on the underside of my chair, and it is programmed to make a beeping noise every 30 minutes.  And once I recline for my weight shift, it won’t make another sound for another 30 minutes.  But if I ignore that first warning, the Bottoms-Up will then beep once every minute for 5 minutes until I do recline, and if I ignore all of those beeps, the device will make a rapid set of beeps to let me know that it will stop monitoring my sitting.  As a general rule, I don’t like to delay my pressure reliefs, but there are certain times when it might be inconvenient or inappropriate to lay back with my footrests up in the air.  Whether you’re arguing for your client in Family Court or digging in to a big plate of spaghetti, sometimes you have no choice but to wait until later to do your weight shift.  The Bottoms-Up understands that I have an active lifestyle, so if I have to wait a little while to recline on some occasions, all I have to do to start the timer again is recline.  It doesn’t get any easier than this.

Before I started using the Bottoms-Up, I would have an average of 5 pressure wounds a year.  The Bottoms-Up has improved my skin tolerance to the extent that now I average 1 pressure sore about every 18 months.  My productivity and my quality of life have grown tremendously with the Bottoms-Up, and I cannot describe how liberating and exhilarating it is for me to have my skin management under control.  So many of us with spinal cord injuries pride ourselves on maximizing our abilities and achieving heights that seem unattainable, and I have always been honored to be a part of that group.  But you can’t conquer the world while you’re lying in bed all of the time.  The Bottoms-Up has given me another invaluable weapon in fighting skin breakdown, and just like my electric wheelchair, this is one piece of equipment that I cannot do without.

Cheryl O.