A famous idiom says, “Enough is as good as a feast.” That’s ridiculous.
Maybe it’s all right when the “enough” refers to servings of Brussels sprouts or the
number of funny cat videos on YouTube. But in so many other cases, enough — as in good
enough — is a cop-out. Really, wouldn’t it
be better to have more than enough vacation
days? Money in the bank? Chocolate?
Enough becomes an especially
dangerous word as stakes get higher.
Does anyone really want just enough
health? What does enough happiness or
enough opportunity mean? And things
really get complicated when someone
else gets to be in charge of deciding what is enough for us. The American Revolution was
fought because Britain believed the colonists across the ocean had enough rights and
representation, while those colonists heartily disagreed, saying in essence about issues
such as taxation without representation, Enough is enough.
This issue of Mobility Management is the antithesis of enough. Rather than be content
with the status quo — or more accurately, expecting seating & wheeled mobility clients
to be content — our Power Chair Case Studies (page 20) demonstrate what can happen
when rehab teams think creatively and act innovatively to reduce the amount of compromising
that clients have to do every day.
Similarly, our Clinically Speaking column by Steve Mitchell (page 14) blows
enough out of the water by exploring the feasibility of what Mitchell refers to as Open
Complex Rehab.
At Cleveland VA Medical Center, Mitchell specializes in working with veterans who have
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Due to the quick and unpredictable progression of
ALS, he points out that these clients often don’t have the opportunity to “grow into” their
seating & mobility systems. They simply don’t have the time to gradually learn how to best
work with their wheelchairs in different environments. That truth, Mitchell says, means that
to best serve this population, all stakeholders need to share information about what sorts
of configurations — head arrays, for example — work best so those systems can be replicated
as quickly and easily as possible for other clients with ALS. This isn’t just a job for the
industry’s manufacturers, Mitchell contends; it’s a responsibility that needs to be shared by
the entire industry if clients are to be best served.
This issue is full of examples of clinicians, ATPs, clients and other members of rehab
teams saying, Good enough is not enough. That isn’t the easiest or quickest stance to take, of
course. It’s amazing how easy it is to decide that something is good enough for someone
else. When our plates get overloaded, the phone won’t stop ringing and the demands on
our time won’t let up, it’s easy to say, That’s good enough. But I’m thankful to those who,
rather than walking away at that point, stubbornly stay right where they are and say, It’s
not good enough for me.
