Handicap Helps

Bet you're wondering why I'm writing about handicap helps, aren't you? Well, I have used them in the past like when I had my knee replacement. And they were a pretty good help at that time.

I have suffered from bad knees since High School. I have no cartilege in my joints. So my joints hurt and artritis in the joints doesn't help. It is what is it - you just live with it and go on. However, there comes a point in time where although you think you can do everything you used to you are strongly reminded that you can't. You are getting OLD!

I came to this conclusion a few years ago when a friend and I made a cardboard maze at church for the Fall Festival. It was fun to make: cardboard boxes, duct tape, creepy things to crawl over, things hanging down to crawl through, dead ends. All fun, and whoever is making the tunnel (maze) has to go through to check it out. Still all good.

Now, I don't think I mentioned that our maze was in the Upper Roomm of our Family Life Center at church. There are a set of stairs at each end. Our thought was climb up one flight, go through the maze and go down the other side. Now doesn't it sound much more fun to go down on a cardboard slide? I thought so

Now, to be certain it was safe for the kids someone had to try it out, right? And I was careful, I thought. I knew my knee might not do so well at the bottom so I tried to keep it up out of the way. Well, I went down a lot faster than I thought I would and let's just say that I hit the bottom kind of hard and jammed the knee. No problem, we fixed that up so the kids wouldn't get hurt. We put some bean bags at the bottom. I limped around for the duration of the Festival and realized that perhaps I had hurt myself when I was unable to put any weight on my knee.

Four hours later I am at Urgent Care where I receive a brace and a recommendation to go see orothopedic doctor the next week. Nice guy, that doctor. Nice enough to tell me that my knees were bad and I needed to have a total knee replacement. Well, that was a few years ago, I recovered; but now my knees don't bend as well as they did. Again, you just deal with it.

Now, fast forward to the current year. Gary and I just took a mini vacation. We checked into a hotel for a few days and just hung out, rested, swam in the pool, read. Nothing major just relaxed. But the pool brings about another handicap help.

This pool had a chair lift to assist people in and out of the pool. It was just us in the pool and Gary wanted to try it. Oh my!! I don't know how they can consider this chair left a help. Gary used the controls and got himself out of the pool and almost went flying out of the chair. Why I let him convince me to give it a try I don't know.

Have you ever used one of those things? It comes with a seat belt - and trust me - it is there for a reason. You need it. You strap yourself onto the chair and start lifting. As it lifts it kinda swings itself towards the side of the pool until WHAM! You hit the side of the pool. It adjusts itself and slowly goes up and out a little at a time - until it clears the edge of the pool. Then all of a sudden that chair swings to the left faster than a bullet out of a gun. If you are not belted in it will swing you out because it just jerks itself to a stop! It's scary!! I won't be using one again I'm sure. I don't know how anyone would use it. Unless, there is more control than I'm aware of. Maybe Gary got carried away with the control just for fun. Surely, they would not put a severly handicapped person through that torture to swim.

So handicap helps - what works: grabbers that let you reach things up high or down low, hand-held shower heads (these are wonderful), shower chairs - love, love, love them, rails - great for pulling yourself up, swimming pool chair lifts -- at the very bottom of the list of helps.

And if you are wondering would I do the cardboard slide again? The answer is YES!! It was fun! My body may think it's old but my mind says have fun!