Pets and Rehab

When on my fieldwork this past Friday, I discovered an issue that I'm surprised doesn't come up more when dealing with inpatient rehabs and elderly patients. A patient had a R CVA and had been in the hospital for a few days. The patient had a good prognosis, good strength and was on the road to being independent in his ADL's. There was one thing holding him back from putting all he had into therapy - his dogs at home. His wife was frail and living at home, be he knew that she was no match to their two dogs, a 6month old german shepard and a 1 year old black lab. He was more worried that they were not being taken care of than how his wife was doing. Apparently these dogs were his newly found children and followed him where ever he went on their farm, essentially staying with him all day. Now that he was in the hospital and hadn't seen them in days, he was in complete distress over how they were being cared for. He was almost depressed because he hadn't seen his dogs. This was a wake up call that this situation was hindering him from progressing his rehabilitation. What I saw next was amazement. The recreational therapist came in and told him that she could set up a visit from his dogs. As long as they were bathed, up to date on shots and had their nails clipped, that they could come in and visit him. You would have thought that they told him that he had won a million dollars. I could see the life come back in him. He called his son and had the trip set up for the next day. The rest of the day all that he could talk about were his dogs and how happy he was that he was going to see them the next day. His therapist described how much of an impact that his dogs coming to visit had on him. He was actively participating in therapy and actually putting some work into it. I think that this was a great example on the effects that psychosocial impact can have on rehabilitation. All this patient needed was to see his dogs, to know that they were ok to give him the motivation to get well. I can also see how a physical disability can affect your identity as a person also. I have had previous contact with a patient who had a lower extremity amputation. This fellow thought that his life was over after the surgery. He didn't think that anyone would look at him the same, or even look at him at all. As a young, single male, I could see how this had taken a tole on his self confidence. And why wouldn't it? Losing a leg is hard enough but when you are young and in the best part of your life, a traumatic thing like this happens? Devastating. The way that we helped him cope with this was to set him up with a support group with other amputees to help him express some of his grief from losing his leg. They were able to share their experiences with him and also how they had went on with life and made the best of it and not staying down and negative all of the time. They were able to meet out at places and he became more and more comfortable with his new life and also his new leg (he was able to get a prosthetic). I think that a support group is the best way to cope with something like this. You are surrounded by people who are in the same situation as you and are able to share experiences that others may not be able to help you with. Support is the key, you feel accepted. Here is a website that I love; www.petsastherapy.org , that tells all about pet therapy, when animals can come into the hospitals to have the same impact that this mans pets did, to all patients.