Back in May of 2012, my 87 year old great aunt fell and fractured her back in 7 places. Due to her age, she has extremely brittle bones and severe osteoporosis. Since her surgery and disability, she can no longer do stairs so, we have been looking into getting a new stairlift put into her home.
She has been in rehab since her fall and now we want to bring her back home. To make this happen, we will need a wheelchair accessible stair lift put into the home to take her comfortably up to the second floor.
One thing we have learned by doing all of this research on them is that you can certainly purchase them, but you can also rent them or do a rent-to-own contract. I think since she is 87 years old and in poor health, renting one would be the way for us to go.
The second thing we have learned about stair lifts is that you can get ones that are meant for indoor use or ones that are meant for outdoor use. In addition, you can get them to incline in their direction or to go up vertically, like an elevator.
For our needs, we would need an indoor model that has a straight incline and I would like for it to fold up when it’s not in use. After all, other people live in the house and I don’t want it clogging up a lot of space on the stairwell. I would also like the new stair lift to mount on the stairs and not onto the wall (which they do make models like this).
We found one that meets all of that criteria and then has some other added benefits that I didn’t even think of. For example, we found one that plugs into a wall outlet and then has a rechargeable battery for backup. In addition, it has a foot rest, seat belt and body safety sensors.
I guess you could say, we have found the perfect stair lift to get installed into my aunt’s home. It is really tough being her caregivers and being responsible for her health and well-being, but we feel this is a better option for our family than to leave her sit in a rehab/nursing home.
Have any of you ever purchased a stair lift and if so, what kind did you end up purchasing? I would love to hear some feedback from anyone who has experience with this as we are complete newbies in stair lift purchasing. Thanks!
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