5yo with Cerebral Palsy

Jester6

Earning My Ears
Joined
Sep 28, 2007
My daughter has severe spastic quad CP. She has always struggled with her body temperature. We will be there in a couple weeks and I am very concerned about her becoming overheated. We bought a little fan/water sprayer, but any other little tips you can give to keep her body cooled down? She is in a wheelchair.
 
besides what you said have you tried a cooling vest, some you can put ice in some eveparet water. I would also think about getting an umbrella for her wheel chair so that when you are walking from ride to ride she can still be in the shade. going along with the cooling vest you can buy cooling towel they do not work that great in the humidity but they do work, I find the ones that are cloth ( not think thick kind like O2cool to work best)
 
Great! I do have an umbrella for her chair but hadn't thought of the vest. I will look into it now! I do had a towel. I wondered about the humidity as well. Thank you!
 
Also look at taking breaks in the air conditioning. Shows like Philharmagic, Muppets 3D, Little Mermaid, etc are great places to cool off. Remember to stay hydrated. My daughter is nonverbal so she cant tell us she's thirsty. We just make sure we keep cold drinks close by and push fluids. She gets really hot and sweaty in her stroller.
 
We've learnt that applying cooling to the wrists works best to reduce temperature quickly (rather than head or neck). Get into air conditioning whenever you require it. Hope you have a wonderful trip!
 
we use frog toggs, remember all quick services have ice water for free, and the umbrella. Also remember the first aid stations will allow you a place to rest and be cool as well. They will also refrigerate any meds that are in pharmacy bottles. We always have the pharmacy label up the super small bottles. Side note be prepared for great character interaction and not being invisible. :) Have a blast
 
Others have given you the practical suggestions, so I'll give you the fun ones. Don't forget about water rides. And sometimes that cup of water does more good dumped over the head rather than drank.
 


My daughter has severe spastic quad CP. She has always struggled with her body temperature. We will be there in a couple weeks and I am very concerned about her becoming overheated. We bought a little fan/water sprayer, but any other little tips you can give to keep her body cooled down? She is in a wheelchair.

Is there any way to go at a less hot/humid time? It can be brutally hot in Florida all the way through September. And when we were there a few weeks ago I noticed that the AC wasn't all that powerful. It barely felt cool.
 
I have CP and use a wheelchair. For me, the biggest issue with heat is that the area from your knees up to your chest gets really hot because air doesn't get to it as easily. I learned the hard way that Florida sun makes that issue worse, so now I always have cold water on hand to put on my shirt to cool the area down quick. It's not ideal but it works! Also if it's possible to put something cool around the back of your daughter's neck that really helps. Here's my number 1 tip. If you're in the magic kingdom and things are getting too hot, go to the art gallery store on Main Street. In there you will find the most amazing air conditioning vent (on the left hand side as you walk/wheel in). Trust me, it's a real life saver!
 
Others have given you the practical suggestions, so I'll give you the fun ones. Don't forget about water rides. And sometimes that cup of water does more good dumped over the head rather than drank.


Unless your talking about someone who is incontinent. Then water rides must be timed with first aid stops.
 
my son also has CP and he does not do well in the heat at all. We try to keep him in AC when possible and cool wet towels behind his neck. Any outdoor area that squirts water we also bring him to ...
 
My two year old has spastic diplegia and we work really hard to keep her cool too. We bought a fan that is usb campatiable and use the Disney World fuel rods to power it. If the fuel rod dies, you just exchange it for a fresh one in any park. We also buy the first aid cold packs for sprains but use them on her. We just wrap one in a linen blanket and place it behind her to help keep her cool for half an hour.
 
A lot of good hints - although since the original post was from September, the poster has probably come and gone already. But, since there is so much good info here, it’s still worth responding to.

I also have a daughter with CP. She has mixed type, but is predominantly spastic quad. She can only stand with support and needs to be lifted onto rides that she can’t stay in her wheelchair for.

We have tried an umbrella to shade her when she was small, but we personally found it to be more trouble than it was worth. The reasons we didn’t like it was that it was kind of in the pusher’s way, prevented us from seeing her and got it the way for transfer and the bus and we needed to put it down during shows to not block others’ view.
We so found it didn’t help as much as we thought it would since much of the time it didn’t actually shade much of her body - if you’ve got one you could adjust the angle to keep up with the sun, it might be more helpful. We just have a hat with a big brim on the front and find that works better for her.

Remember sunscreen for the knees and exposed parts of legs. One time we forgot about that and she ended up with burnt knees - in a wheelchair, parts of the body that would not usually be totally exposed to the sun are pointed right at it.

Water rides are great, but you might get soaked to the skin (especially Kali River Rapids) and you may need to change to dry clothing with no good place to do it. And, putting a wet person into a dry wheelchair makes the wheelchair wet. We also find Kali challenging because everything is wet and slippery.

Because we need to lift our daughter in and out of rides that are not wheelchair accessible, we try to alternate things that are completely accessible with those where we will have to transfer her. We also try to be aware of lternating long rides like Haunted Mansion with shorter ones where you barely get settled and the ride is over and you need to transfer out again.

F posters have not seen the disABILITIES FAQs thread, it’s full of collected information. You can find it near the top of this board or linked in my signature.
 

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