If you have been diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease (PD), moving around sometimes becomes a chore –- even in the very early stages. As your PD progresses, you may become unsteady in your balance and then falling over becomes a real possibility. If you fall, it hurts of course, and it can also cause damage that can haunt you for months afterwards. Who wants to deal with the pain of a hip fracture or a blow to the head or broken fingers and wrist bones where you tried to cushion the fall? You can do many things to avoid falls and to make moving around in your home easy and safe.
The home of a person with PD will have to be different from the home of a person without PD. A person with PD should not have to attempt to step over loads of clutter or walk along polished or waxed floors. A person with PD should not be forced to navigate holes, upended floorboards, nails or clutter when attempting to find the bathroom in the middle of the night. A person with PD should not have to attempt to travel up and down stairs several times a day to get to the car or to get outside or to get to the laundry room and so forth. As soon as you are diagnosed with PD, you should begin to re-arrange the home in order to maximize your safety and comfort.
In order to make the house safe for a person with PD, changes will need to be made -- most or all relatively minor. As the PD progresses, larger changes involving remodeling sections of the home can be considered. But for the first few years, relatively simple changes and adjustments will go a long way to increasing the safety of the home for the person with PD.
