Starts visit one
Pain
Take the stiffness down.
Hands-on work on rigidity, shoulder and arm pain, and the tightness that turns getting dressed into a fight.
What We Treat
Parkinson’s occupational therapy in Vancouver.
The buttons. The signature that keeps shrinking. The fork that shakes worst on the way up. We do not change the diagnosis. We work on what your hands still do, one-on-one with a licensed Occupational Therapist, every visit.
Sound Familiar?
The small things went first.
- Handwriting that starts normal and shrinks down the page
- Buttons and zippers that have quietly become somebody else’s job
- A fork or a full cup that shakes most on the way to your mouth
- Stiffness in the arm that turns getting a sleeve on into a project
- Keys, jar lids and doorknobs that need your full attention now
- Tasks you used to do without thinking, now quietly avoided
Two or more? These are exactly the things we work on.
Why It Happens
Parkinson’s makes small movements smaller.
Parkinson’s changes how the brain starts and sizes a movement. The instruction still goes out. It just arrives smaller and slower than you meant it. That is why handwriting shrinks across the page, why a button takes four times as long, and why a movement you have done ten thousand times suddenly needs your whole attention. Rigidity in the shoulder and arm, and tremor at rest, sit on top of that.
Occupational therapy does not treat the disease. Your neurologist does that. What we work on is amplitude, dexterity, and the specific jobs that have gotten hard: the signature, the shirt, the cutlery, the phone, the keys. Sometimes the answer is training the movement bigger, on purpose, with someone watching. Sometimes it is changing the tool. Usually it is both, one task at a time, with your therapist.
The Honest Truth
Nothing about this is urgent. That is the trap.
If you keep waiting
- The tasks you hand off rarely come back on their own
- A hand used less loses dexterity on top of what the diagnosis is doing
- Nobody has sat down with you to work out which parts are still trainable
If you start this week
- You leave visit one with the actual list of tasks we are working on
- You practice the movements bigger, on purpose, with someone watching
- A plan with an endpoint, and a home routine sized to your day
No deadline is coming. The only question is how much of your day you keep doing yourself in the meantime.
How We Fix It
The same four phases. Built around your hands.
You are the one who has always done things for yourself. That is the whole reason this is worth working on. Here is what the four phases look like with Parkinson’s.
Once we have a baseline
Prime
Get the range back in play.
Motion, grip and finger dexterity, worked at the point in your day when your medication is actually giving you something.
Once the basics hold
Perform
Train it big. Train it real.
Handwriting, buttons, cutlery, keys and the phone, practiced at full size against the tasks you told us matter.
Reviewed as you go
Prevent
Keep it in your own hands.
A home routine you will actually do, plus the adaptations that keep the gains from quietly slipping: that is the endpoint, not just another appointment.
Got me on a recurring schedule quickly and have been such a pleasure to work with. I enjoy my visits and am treated like a person not a patient. I love that they focus on what you have done and the progress you’ve made instead of focusing on occasional missed exercises. Great clinic.
Shared by Rebecca H. · Google review
Visit 1: you name the tasks that have gotten hard
Every visit after: we work that list, biggest one first
Parkinson’s disease
One-on-one, every visit
Questions, Answered
What people ask before booking for Parkinson’s.
No. Nothing we do changes the disease, and we will not tell you otherwise. Your neurologist manages the Parkinson’s. Occupational therapy works on what the Parkinson’s is costing you in a normal day: handwriting, buttons, cutlery, keys, and the arm stiffness that makes getting dressed slow. The goal is keeping those jobs in your own hands, for as long as we can.
It matters a great deal, and we plan around it. Tell your therapist when your medication kicks in and when it fades, and we fit the session and the home routine to that window. Sometimes we work the harder window on purpose, because that is the part of the day where you need a strategy, not a personal best.
You get a plan with an endpoint, not an open tab of appointments. Your plan runs through all four phases, Pain, Prime, Perform, and Prevent, and you will always know which phase you are in and what is left. Parkinson’s is long term, so plenty of people finish a block of visits, go live their life, and come back when something changes. That is a normal way to use us.
Book Your Visit
Ready when you are.
Request a time and a real person from our front desk calls you back to get you scheduled. No phone tree. No ‘someone will reach out.’ Just a plan.
- Hours Mon–Fri 7:00am–5:00pm · Sat–Sun closed
- (360) 989-1200 Prefer to talk now? Call us.
- One-on-one with a licensed Occupational Therapist, every visit
5.0 · 146 Google reviews
Your request goes straight to our front desk
Step 1 of 5
Request sent.
That’s the hard part done. We’ll call during clinic hours to get you on the schedule and tell you what to bring.
Visit Us
Care this good, this close.
Gabbert Clinic
- 7710 NE Greenwood Dr # 150, Vancouver, WA 98662
- (360) 989-1200
- Fax: (360) 583-3442
- admin@gabbertclinic.com
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Mon–Fri 7:00am–5:00pm
Sat–Sun closed