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HomeOrderWho Can Use this Exerciser?MeredithJimmyDonnaBreeRoxanneOperating instructionsTypes of TherapyMEAS Photo GalleryTestimonials
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Meredith, with severe cerebral palsy. We were asked to make a bigger Merry Muscles (MM) for her when she was only five years old. She loved it when her father kept her moving while he read his paper. At that time the therapists, including myself, had been taught that it was a cardinal sin to allow children like Meredith to have their feet touching the floor. So, her parents let her down on an angle where she was semi-reclined and only her heels touched the floor. Then, for real FUN they would raise her up at their waist level and swing her back and forth to play swing-me, catch-me between them. Then Meredith outgrew her bigger MM and her parents found out that I had developed MEAS. By then Meredith was 12 years old and too heavy for her very slight mother to lift without pullies. Merediths therapists, because of their training, were very opposed to her having MEAS. I arranged to meet one of them and she finally consented to let Meredith try a bucket seat only and then only if it had under-the-knee wedges and a pummel like Merediths horrid wheel chair. In actual trial we found that the wedges and the pummel INCREASED Merediths extensor-thrusts very badly and she was much better without them BUT she needed extra wings at the top of her upper body section, and she needed an extra set of straps from the front of her bucket seat up to her chest. Even with all this extra support, Meredith could get herself into standing position. So, her mother said, She is my daughter and if she is so determined to stand up, why not let her do so, after all she is so scrambled now what more harm can it do?
This set of photos was taken after Meredith had been using her MEAS for about one year and she was 13 years old. Photos #1-5 demonstrate the method that the group home staff used to put her in her top with bucket seat attached. The directions in the MEAS manual advise placing the client on a bicket seat already attached to the top while the bucket seat is on a surface that allows normal sitting posture, but by now Meredith would get so excited when she saw or heard her MEAS that the best thing to do was put her on the floor directly under where the top pulley was attached to the wooden arched doorway.
Photos #6-8 show how the staff put her in a top/pelvic support.
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