Stairway Lift
When grandma broke her hip last fall we all went to see her in the hospital. After a hip replacement surgery, grandma was back on her feet in only a few weeks. But no matter how many physical therapy sessions she had, she still couldn’t move around like she used to. Mommy insisted that she come and stay with us for a while. Although grandma said she loved being with us, after a few months, she told mommy she missed her old house. But mommy didn’t want her to go. Since granddad had passed a few years ago, grandma had been in that big old house all alone. And now she was having trouble moving.
“How will you even get up the stairs?” Mother asked. Grandma answered that she would have a stairway lift put in. I asked her what that was and she explained it to me. A stairway lift is just a pretty normal looking chair that helps people who have mobility issues get up and down the stairs. They’re attached to a metal railing that run along either side of the stairway. They run on normal batteries and are easy to operate. Mother still wasn’t sure about putting in a stairway lift, so she went to buy one herself.
She soon discovered that hundreds of thousands of elderly and disabled people rely on a stairway lift to get them up and down the stairs. She was also told that these devices give people a feeling of freedom and independence they might not get in a hospital or nursing home. They also allow thousands of people to remain in the homes they love. After her visit to the stairway lift store, mother was convinced that this was just the product grandma needed to remain in her home.
The very next day an installation technician came to grandma’s house and put in her new stairway lift. It only took a couple of hours and he was done. Grandma got in her new lift and took a ride up the stairs. She smile the whole way up. When she came back down she hugged and thanked my mother. I asked if I could take a little ride on the stairway lift myself. They both looked sternly at me. “That’s not a toy,” my mother said to me. I was the only one not smiling.
