What therapies are available to help patients left with permanent physical disabilities?
Many forms of long-term rehabilitative therapy are available for people who have permanent disabilities resulting from transverse myelitis. Medical social workers, often affiliated with local hospitals or outpatient clinics, are the best sources for information about treatment programs and other resources that exist in a community. Rehabilitative therapy teaches people strategies for carrying out activities in new ways in order to overcome, circumvent, or compensate for permanent disabilities. Rehabilitation as yet cannot reverse the physical damage resulting from transverse myelitis or other forms of spinal cord injury. But it can help people, even those with severe paralysis, become as functionally independent as possible and thereby attain the best possible quality of life. Commonly experienced permanent neurological deficits resulting from transverse myelitis include severe weakness, spasticity (painful muscle stiffness or contractions), or paralysis; incontinence; and chronic pain
