Well this therapy isn’t being provided by the hospital but mum heard about this and looked into it online. It wasn’t too expensive to buy a mirror box: (can’t say which site she bought one from – may not be this one) and she saw some videos including on youtube – yes my mum uses youtube!

Dad is now using this twice a day and mum has pointed out that if he doesn’t work on keeping his arm exercises up then a good hand won’t be much good with an arm that can’t do anything. He’s now started his arm exercises again as he has a little hope. He stopped doing them nearly 2 years ago.

My brother was very skeptical when this contraption arrived but tried to move his hands independently with one inside the box and the other outside and visible in the mirror and found that he really couldn’t (or so my mum says).

Hopefully this simple device will be of some benefit – only time will tell.

General info about Mirror Box:
Mirror Box Therapy is a treatment used for phantom limb pain, Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS), for rehabilitation after a stroke, and therapy following a hand or foot injury or surgery.

Mirror therapy was first described by a renowned American based Indian Neurologist Dr.V.S. Ramachandran, Director of the Centre for Brain and Cognition and Professor with the Psychology Department and the Neurosciences Program at the University of California, San Diego.

Mirror box therapy works by utilising the visual input of the mirror image of the good limb to replace that of the missing limb to suppress the “upset” in the somatosensory cortex and thus reduce phantom pain and sensation.