My mother is not doing well; she’s been dealing with cancer for 5+ years now, and she’s recently become very, very frail. She needs a walker to walk, and she’s not even particularly sturdy using it. She’s fallen a few times and hurt herself - nothing serious, thank God, but very scary.
She and my Dad are also very committed to keeping her at home. The problem is, there’s a short staircase between the main living area and the bedrooms, maybe 4-5 steps. It’s very wide, and would accommodate a stairlift like the one I linked above. It would help a lot as she goes up and down the stairs far too often for my comfort (someone always helps her, usually my Dad, but he has his own mobility problems and I’m not at all certain he’d be able to hold her if she did trip.)
I think it’s a great idea… if it works, and if she can manage it. I worry that the work involved in getting into and out of it is more effort than just walking up the 4 or 5 steps that are there. I worry that it requires a fair bit of upper-body strength and mobility to get into the seat, buckle the seatbelt, and pull down the arms. I worry they are going to spend a lot of $$ and effort into something that ultimately doesn’t work.
That said… if it DOES work, it could be a really big help. I’d really like to find one that we can try out, but heck if I know anyone who has one, and even if I did, it’s pretty difficult to get her out of the house in the state she’s in.
Any opinions/experience? Are my fears valid? Looking for any advice I can get.
These things aren’t cheap. I know because we were looking at them for my brother who has trouble walking and now requires a walker.
I agree that trying one out would be good, and perhaps the company that sells them in your area can provide a reference for someone who has one and who would be willing to let you try it out, but if your mom’s situation worsens, as you suspect getting in and out of the thing may be more trouble than it’s worth.
Is there any way you can convert a downstairs room into a bedroom so she wouldn’t ever have to go up the stairs at all? Can they afford to move to a one story house? That was the solution my brother ended up taking.
I’ve known several people to own and use them and we installed one in our church. The key seems to be the stairway/physical arrangement of the house. Really narrow steps without a clear entrance or exit can be an issue but for anything say normal to a little wide is pretty darn good. I know - the companies say that they have models for almost every situation; yeah – and one size clothing fits most people. If you can, get an independent installer or someone with experience with the darn things look at your house first.
The first question I would ask is: “Does your Mom have the patience to mess with the thing?”
Even if it works perfectly as designed and your room layout is conducive, it’ll be a *sloooow *process. Will she instead try to bull her way up the stairs? Being mobility impaired is already frustrating as hell; your mind thinks “Gee, I want a cup of tea.” but the body says “Getting to the kitchen is a 5 minute job and getting back is a 6 minute ordeal.” Adding 5 *more *minutes to fiddle with the elevator chair won’t help unless she’s past the point of being impatient and values not falling more than she values saving 3 minutes.
My aged MIL is much more inclined to rush and take shortcuts than to use the degree of care necessary to prevent all falls. And so she falls. She lives alone and some day we’ll get bad news. But she’s living the only way her stubborn nature is willing to live.
Converting the living room into a bedroom or at least putting a bed in there might be the best option. We’ve already found a place to put a commode on the main level. I don’t think they’ll move; they have a pretty sweet house, albeit really messed up because they built it to be a retirement home but didn’t think about the fact that stairs are stupid, and no bathroom on the main floor is even stupider.
We live in a small, remote area. Unfortunately there’s only a few dealers in the area, and no independent installers that I can find.
First (best) option: Move to house with no stairs.
This is 10x better than
Second option: Add bath (research "Bathroom for mobility-impaired – it is hard to see the problems with standard 5x8 bathroom until your body don’t work so good no more). I’m finding out now…
This is 4x better than
Third option: Chairlift. I suspect that, with enough money (as in 10’s of thousands of dollars) a device can be installed which turns toward the user and rotates as it quickly ascends and is rotated to present the rider with “stand up and you’re there” delivery.
The only time I’ve seen one, it was installed at public expense (as in “cheapest available”) for a neighbors tenant. When he moved in he could still get outside with an oxygen bottle and cannula.
He deteriorated quickly.
After the chair was installed, he used it for about a year. Then the Neptune Society van showed up for him about a year later.
Not a thrilling testament to the usefulness of the device.
If you can’t get them out of the house, add a bath on the ground level and have bed, bath and kitchen all on the ground floor.
The sewer line is underground - if there is a toilet on the second floor, a sewer line (usually a cast iron pipe and vent called “the stack” by plumbers) is running up through a wall from underground to the second floor. Vents now can be done via “AAV” vents, and can be installed in a wall or behind the drawers in a vanity cabinet.
Once the stack has been tapped for the ground floor bath, the rest of the job is “advanced handyman” grade.
If this house is on a slab, there is going to be a mess digging up the slab to install the drain and waste pipes.
I get what you are all saying, but they are not going to move. It’s not in the cards, if for no other reason than my mother likely doesn’t have enough time left to do it. She’s not in great shape. None of what I’m asking about here involves a long-term plan. We’re trying to make her as comfortable as we can in the weeks she has left.
Bathroom on main floor isn’t happening either. My family is in construction, they know what they’re doing, there’s no way to add a bathroom to the first floor. She does have a commode there, so that’s not really an issue.
Really, I just want advice/opinions on the stairlift. My family and I have thought this through a lot; it’s an option, it’s probably not a great option, but it’s what we have left. We’ll do it if there’s a reasonable chance it’ll make her life better, if only for a few weeks. Money isn’t a huge issue. What I’m trying to avoid is making a stupid decision to begin with; I tend to feel that it’s not going to work because she won’t be able to use it effectively and/or it won’t really be much easier than walking up the 4-5 steps. But what do I know? I could be wrong.
IMO if you’re genuinely dealing with a few weeks, not a few months, you’re setting up to fail. Fail by creating a lot of disruption and construction mess during the window she might still use it, followed by it being available, but useless, while she can’t use it.
You could more cheaply hire a big strong helper to be present full time to assist (or carry) her from what will soon be a wheelchair stationed on the ground floor to the other wheel chair stationed on the upper floor.
The only way it might make longer-term sense is if dear old Dad is sliding down into the same mobility problems fairly soon.
We installed one for my father a while back to get from the main floor to his bedroom on the second floor.
I think it’s been a generally positive experience (to the extent that these sorts of things can be positive). Installation was pretty easy. They came out and assessed it. Came back and installed it in one day. They do drill holes in your staircase, so be aware of that. It is expensive. And it is slow.
On your “upper-body strength and mobility” question: It takes a certain amount of mobility to pivot from the walker into the chair. I don’t think it takes strength, as such, (and upper body weakness is a real problem for him, so it can’t take too much). But he “parks” the walker next to the chair and moves over into it. If your hallway were big enough to park in front and sit down, it might be easier. (But you either need to be able to get over the footrest or have the ability to reach down and fold it out). But they’re harder to climb into than you would think.
My sister has one in her house. She doesn’t have much difficulty standing up or sitting down, so that’s not a problem for her. It’s kind of slow for my tastes, but since she would have extreme difficulty getting up a flight of stairs by herself, she’s fine with it.
Can she get in and out of a car by herself? Can she buckle a seatbelt/shoulder harness? Watching my sister do those things, I’d say using a stairlift is easier.
Shortly after my spinal cord injury, my parents put in one of those lifts in their house (I moved back home for a while after I was injured). They do work, altho they are incredibly slow and loud. I hated that thing with a passion, many times I just got out of my wheelchair and manually climbed the steps on my ass.
On the other hand, other than the fact your legs no longer paid any attention to your requests, you were still a young, strong man. I’ve known several young men with spinal cord injuries who basically did the “literally drag my ass up the stairs” solution, but frail old ladies often don’t have the necessary upper body strength.
I think stairlifts probably have a smaller niche than most people assume. I also wonder if in some cases it isn’t so much they allow the disabled person to get up and down the stairs as enable a *caretaker *to get the person up and down the stairs without injury to either party. In other words, a caretaker can load and unload the disabled party, strap them in, and so forth.
Our house had one when we moved in- older woman living there before had it for 10 years. When I removed it and put it on craigslist for $600, I got 20 replies for people wanting it. so even 10 years old, they are still worth good money. It probably weighed closed to 500 lbs. We let every child coming to the house take 1 ride up and 1 down and they never requested a 2nd- it is that slow.
As we purchased the house, we enquired about it. It was used for groceries and laundry from the basement (garage and washer/dryer) and initially the lady used it to pull her up the stairs walking beside it. Until her arthritis? got too bad that she finally started riding it (but the need to sit and stand up are still required to use it). My mom used it when she visited and she was glad that she was “a few years away yet from needing it.” She subseuqently moved into a 1 floor setup.
That all being said, it does work and very well. But it isn’t a miracle worker, it requires walking, standing, sitting on either end of the journey.
I’ll second the bolded part. Would a home helper work instead (especially if we’re talking a matter of weeks)? There are a large number of agencies now that could help you find someone trained in elder care. We used this method when my grandmother was failing but refused to leave her home to go into the nursing home. It allowed her to stay at home until just before she died. It sounds like it could take some of the burden off of your dad as well.
I installed one 9 years ago for my husband, but I’m the one using it now. As for installation, myself and a handy friend did it in less than half a day, and that included running a new outlet (it uses power to charge a built-in battery so it will run during an outage). Yes, it’s slow, but it beats the hell out of a fall, or having a “helper” fall while carrying you and/or suffer possible back injury. Takes nearly no effort to get into, I use my cane to flip the footrest up and down. Switch to make mine go up and down is easy to press with even the side of a wrist. Definitely try to find one to test, if at all possible, expensive and you will drill holes in the treads/floor, but makes independent life possible for me.
but got timed out.