Caregiver Aids #8: Portable Lift

In July, we're spending a few weeks in Maine at a handicapped-accessible house on a lake. While I'm quite thrilled with the prospect of a vacation getaway, I was getting concerned with the prospect of having to live without a lift system to get Skip transferred from bed/wheelchair/toilet/shower sheerly by back power alone.

I looked online, primarily at Spinlife.com, to see what portable lifts are available. Then, I checked them out on eBay. Was the sole bidder on an almost new lift that sells on SpinLife for more than $500, got it for less than $100 including shipping. It came in a lot of pieces, shown on the living room floor in the first photo. Managed to get it put together in less than an hour. Attached a SureHands body support to see how that would work. Looks like we'll probably need to get a sling for most of the transfers, as the body support is so long it's hard to get Skip elevated high enough to transfer on/off her power and manual wheelchairs (based on our test this afternoon).

Will scour eBay for slings this evening!

Once we get a sling and some experience with it for transferring, I think this will prove a great device when we're traveling. Since we plan to to do all our traveling via car going forward, we'll be able to bring this with us in the Toaster (aka Honda Element).

Note: If you have familiarity with slings for transfers, can you share your experience? There are lots of sling styles available and am not sure which to pick.