Making Your Cell Phone Work for You

Pearls for Parkinson's: Tips for Daily Living with PD. 

To watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/nryKChbzaj8

Your cell phone can be more than a way to stay connected - it can be a powerful tool to help make daily life with Parkinson’s a little easier.

In this week’s Pearls for Parkinson’s, we share simple ways to use your phone to work for you. Small technology adjustments can help reduce stress, increase confidence, and promote independence. Whether you're newly diagnosed or have been living with Parkinson’s for years, there may be features on your phone you haven’t discovered yet.

Tune in to this week’s episode and learn practical tips to make your cell phone work for you. 

To support more programs like this: https://wiparkinson.app.neoncrm.com/forms/support-pearls4pd

Wisconsin Parkinson Association 
website: https://wiparkinson.org/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@wiparkinson
facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wiparkinson/
instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wiparkinson/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to Pearls for Parkinsons. Here is this week's daily living tip. Welcome back to Pearls for Parkinsons. Today we're talking about something many of us use every day our cell phones. A phone can be much more than the way we call or text. For people living with Parkinson's, it can also be a tool for safety, for reminders, communication, and staying connected. The key is making it work for you. Let's start with tremor and hand changes. If tapping small icons feels frustrating, increasing the text size and the display size on your phone settings can help. Many phones also let you enlarge the keyboard. A stylus pen can help some people with more accurate tapping, and using sturdy phone case can also make the phone easier to grip. Mine has this nice case on the back, and it helps me to be able to grip it better for when I'm going to use it. Another plural is to use your voice. Voice assistants like Siri or Google Assistant can help you make calls, send texts, set alarms, and ask for directions, or even create reminders without needing to type. Simply saying, call my daughter or remind me to take my medication at 2 p.m., this can make life easier. Now let's talk about hearing. If phone calls are hard to hear, turn on speaker phone in a quiet room or use Bluetooth hearing aids or earbuds if you have them. Many phones also have captioning features that provide live text during calls, which can be extremely helpful. Reminders are another powerful tool. Use alarms or calendar alerts for medications, appointments, exercise, hydration, or when it comes time to leave the house. A phone can become extra memory support that travels with you everywhere. Another important role is emergency access. Most smartphones allow you to add emergency contacts as favorites, medical information, allergies, and medications that first responders can access from the lock screen. Consider adding this information and learning how it works for your device. Also think about your favorites. Place your most important contacts. Maybe it's your spouse, your children, a close friend, a doctor, a caregiver. I have my emergency vet. All of that into your favorites list and for one touch calling. When you need help, that timing simply matters. If voice changes from Parkinson's make calls difficult, try calling when you have the most energy and you're sitting upright and taking a breath before speaking and slowing your pace. Speaker phone can also help you focus more on speaking clearly and less on holding the phone. And one more pearl, keep your phone charged and nearby, especially at night or when you're home alone. A fully charged phone can be one of the simplest safety tools you own. Technology doesn't have to be perfect to be helpful. Even one new setting or one new habit can make your day easier. And if you have difficulty with that, try to recruit one of your children or your grandchildren to come and just set those things up for you so that you have them and they can show you how to use them and access them in your phone. Because trust me, they know. Thanks for joining me today on Pearls for Parkinsons. If this episode could help someone you know, please share it with them and tune in next Monday for more Pearls for Parkinson's. The Wisconsin Parkinson Association is a grassroots organization funded by people like you. To support more local programming like this, visit wiparkinson.org.