Today I went to a client's house for his weekly follow-up Occupational Therapy visit. Having met a lot of our activity of daily living goals already we had started to focus in on progressing the strength and coordination of his non-dominant hand, which he had injured in a stroke event several months ago. Luckily he regained full range of motion in his hand but his coordination and ability to do fine motor activities (tying shoelaces, buttoning a shirt...etc) is still lacking.
I had already decided to order him a Neuro Muscular Electrical Stimulation unit for his in-home use but until that arrived I wanted to continue to progress him towards full function by giving him ideas for functional tasks he could practice to improve his coordination and dexterity. Because he is still the cook in the house I had instructed him last week to try balancing a saucepan full of water in his non dominant hand while walking laps on his deck; he would get feedback on his performance moment to moment from seeing the water move and he could struggle or fail at the task without causing a mess.
He laughed today as he told me that it hadn't gone very well, and that he was ready for any new ideas I had that didn't involve water and getting his shoes drenched.
We happened to be sitting at his dining room table with his laptop open in front of us; he had been checking his Email and Facebook and suddenly an idea hit me. I asked him to move the detachable mouse to his non dominant hand and navigate the browser window to search for a maze game we could try. We found a free maze game at http://www.addictinggames.com/puzzle-games/clickmaze2.jsp and after watching a terrible ad for women's menstrual cycle products he got to try it. After a few minutes of losing all three of his "lives" in 10 seconds he stopped to read the directions and voila...a new therapy tool was born!
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