Wonders of Wheelchair Lift
November 5th, 2009 | by blog |When our parents died when we were teenagers, I knew I’d have to grow up fast and help take care of my sister, Jess. She’s a quadriplegic and has been in a wheelchair she was born. Since i was her elder brother, I always had to care for her, but i never took it as chore since the reality is that she also cared for me. When I finally got my license, Jess was overjoyed. She said that she had not seen much of the world since she was confined to that chair, but now she wishes to see all the wonderful places. I didn’t mind bit my kid sister tagging along with me most places I went. But one thing really bothered me and that was loading and unloading that massive wheelchair of hers. It was one of those motorized things and must have weighed around a hundred pounds. Either that or I’m just weak. But ofcourse i couldn’t tell any thing to her. But I started looking into buying a wheelchair lift right away.
Shopping for a wheelchair lift is like shopping for anything else—you wouldn’t believe how many different models they have! There are basically two type ofwheelchair lifts that can be used for you vehicle—an internal wheelchair lift and an external one. An internal wheelchair lift is secured inside the trunk of your vehicle and it slowly hoists the chair into your trunk, while the external models attach to the hitch of your car or truck and lift the chair into the trunk. I opted to go with the internal wheelchair lift because of the storage issues.
Jess reacted very positively and smiled on seeing her new lift. It was revealed later on that she was also bothered by the pains i took in loading and unloading the wheelchair for quite sometime.
“That’s sweet,” I said. “But you didn’t have to worry about me.”
“I wasn’t,” she said, and smiled. “I wondered if you intended to drop my chair.”
We both laughed for a long time. Then we sat on our car and zipped away for some eats. Since we have acquired this new wheelchair lift ,loading and unloading her chair requires almost no effort – almost as simple as operating the stair lift at home. It seems so surprising to me that i spent so much time struggling with it in the past. But thats what big brothers are supposed to be meant for.
