Sexual Healing by IntimateRider Daniel Knowlton • Orthopedics This Week
Here’s something that could really enable the disabled. When patients undergo hip or knee joint replacement surgeries, they might imagine their rehabilitation process as physical therapy in a clinical setting.
But what about the rehabilitation that happens in the bedroom?
Any injury or surgery that affects an adult patient’s physical mobility may also hinder that patient’s sexual ability. Resuming normal sexual activity with one’s partner after surgery can be a difficult, frustrating and even embarrassing process, but it’s an important part of healing and rehabilitation. And the IntimateRider from HealthPostures is here to help.Designed by a quadriplegic patient with limited arm movement and no trunk or leg muscle control, the IntimateRider is a low seat on a gliding frame which helps restore normal sexual mobility. Although this specialized love seat seems to be designed for men, women can also benefit from using the IntimateRider. The seat is very stable, requires little effort to move, and allows most wheelchair-bound patients to transfer to the IntimateRider on their own. HealthPostures even designed a companion product, called the RiderMate, which is a simple cot on which your partner can lie at the same height as the IntimateRider. The company sells their products in the U.S. through their web site and has several international distributers around the globe.
Who Does It Benefit?
According to a recent HealthPostures press release, U.S. patients undergo 300,000 total knee replacement surgeries and 190,000 hip replacement surgeries every year. Returning to a normal, active sex life can be quite a challenge during the initial healing process. And for patients with serious spinal injuries and those who require a wheelchair, regaining confidence in one’s sexuality can sometimes seem impossible. Yet there are plenty of testimonials from patients who found that the IntimateRider helped them get back to a sexually active lifestyle.One such patient, featured on the IntimateRider web site, says, “I want to be as much a part of this sexual experience as [my partner] is,” and the IntimateRider allows this patient “to do natural things as opposed to just lying on my back.” He goes on to say that this love seat has “given us back that confidence, that determination, that real intimate feeling of being a couple as opposed to just two people going through the motions.”
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that a patient’s rehabilitation includes not just their physical body, but their mental and sexual health as well. Fortunately, the IntimateRider is the sort of product that reminds patients and their partners, as one testimonial says, that “it’s still okay to get wild and crazy.”