New limitations don’t always mean you have to give something up — they just mean you need to learn how to do it differently. An occupational therapist can help. Occupational therapists can offer personalized techniques and adapted strategies to help people with transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy (ATTR-CM) learn to cope with the challenges of living with the disease.
What does occupational therapy involve?
Occupational therapy helps people manage changes in their physical abilities that are brought on by a chronic disease, disability, injury or trauma. An occupational therapist works with patients to assess their individual obstacles and help find ways to work around them. Solutions can also include reinforcing physical strength or coordination.
Read more about ATTR-CM treatment and care
With the support of an occupational therapist, patients learn to manage daily tasks in an adapted way and find the right tools to make daily life easier. Learning to do things differently reduces anxiety, encourages self-confidence and makes life easier to navigate.
How can occupational therapy help with ATTR-CM?
Living with ATTR-CM can mean learning to navigate a symptom burden that negatively impacts your quality of life. You might not feel up to running errands on your bicycle anymore or like you can tackle taking down holiday lights. Symptoms such as shortness of breath, fatigue, coughing or wheezing, dizziness, swelling of the legs, feet and abdomen, brain fog and irregular heartbeat are common in people living with ATTR-CM. The symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome or spinal stenosis, which occur in some cases of ATTR-CM, can also be debilitating.
An occupational therapist will start by understanding the unique frustrations or roadblocks you’re experiencing as a result of your ATTR-CM. While assessing your needs, they’ll visit your home, get to know what’s important to you, speak to your family and close friends and form an idea of how they can help support you.
Following the assessment, the occupational therapist will suggest interventions to help overcome the barriers, such as assistive devices, adapted approaches or ways of improving physical strength and coordination. They may make suggestions like a visual schedule to help combat brain fog or the best ergonomic mouse to ease the pain of carpal tunnel.
As you test these techniques and learn to integrate the interventions into your routine, your occupational therapist will provide ongoing support and advice. It may take some time to become familiar with a new approach to managing daily life, but the benefits will be felt as you increase your independence and reduce your moments of frustration.
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