Cans for K!

This week at FCRT one of the mums of a young girl in the group I help out with started a campaign. Its called Cans for "K" (I'm going to call her K here as I can't use full names due to confidentiality arrangements!) Anyway, K has Cerebal Pasly which is a group of disorders which affect the body in a number of ways.

It can affect the brain and nervous system functions such as hearing, learning, movement, seeing and thinking, so as you can imagine, it can have devastating effects for the person with the disorder and the people close to them too. There are over four different types of Cerebal Palsy and they all have a range of symptoms, but the most notable past of the whole group of disorders is that there is no cure for them. Therefore a whole group of people are involved in just keeping the patient comfortable and giving them as much independence as possible. A primary care doctor, dentist, social worker, physio, SLT, OT and other specialists, including a neurologist, rehabilitation physician, pulmonologist, and gastroenterologist can be involved in a single case of Cerebal Palsy.

 But in regard to making life easy for an individual and the people around them, Occupational Therapists play a huge roll. In "K"'s case they have provided her with a special square walking frame, as well as tripod walking sticks for short distance posture improving walking. Their next step is to create "K" a specially modified trike to improve her mobility and build leg muscle tone. This is where the campaign comes in! The trike is going to cost over £1500 (I think) to design and build with the seal of approval from professionals that it will be suitable and beneficial for her, so this money is going to be raised by donations of cans for mass recycling.   

For any further info on Cerebal palsy have a look at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001734/ , its a medical encyclopedia that gives an overview of the disorder.

I hope you found this interesting!

Charlie