Putting Pants on People with MS

If you’re a caregiver or in-home care professional who works specifically with people with MS then you know that sometimes the simple act of putting pants on someone with MS is not as easy as it may sound. Depending on the severity of your patients MS will ultimately determine the difficult itself of course, but some situations may include:

1) Your patient has lost some mobility in their legs but still retain regular upper body strength.

2) Your patient has lost all mobility in their legs but still retain regular upper body strength.

3) Your patient has lost all mobility in their legs but still retain enough upper body strength to aid in the lifting and
(putting pants on) process.

4) Your patient has lost all mobility in their legs and only has a small amount of upper body strength but not able to aid in the lifting (putting pants on) process.

Depending on which category you, and your patient fall under needless to say will determine the best techniques to go about putting pants on people with MS. If you’re fortunate to be working with a patient with MS who is only at stage #1 then you should consider yourself lucky because even having the ability to hold themselves up for just a few seconds makes a world of a differnece in the lifting process whether it be for transfers, or dressing purposes.

If you find yourself working with someone from category #2, then you should still consider yourself lucky because while they may not be able to support themselves on their legs at-all anymore they’re still able to aid with their upper body strength for helping with both transfers and putting their pants on (typically done on the bed).

If you’re working with someone from either the #3 or #4 category, then you’ve certainly realized and noticed the increased difficulty in performing certain transfers and even putting your patients pants on (alone). I can recall working with someone who has MS who was in category #4, and it typically took TWO of us to put his pants on and it was still a process that took about 5-minutes. Although unlike most, we did not do it in his bed; our approach included:

Taking his pants and shimmying them up each leg as far as we could, and then to get them up past the bottom of his thighs, this would require one person to lift him while another pulled his pants up above his waist during the lift. Seeing as my patient was 225lbs, this was not an easy task and I certainly wish during that time we had something like Pants Up Easy to help us. Certainly, having pants up easy to help us put my patients pants on would have made things 100x easier and would not require two people.

Should you find yourself in a similar position, or know someone who is, you may want to consider looking further into Pants Up Easy to see how it can alleviate some of your lifting efforts, starting TODAY.