“I just kept looking online and when I discovered that toilet to shower chair, I measured our bathroom and it fit perfectly.”
This type of chair can be a relief for those struggling with safe transfers. This is called a toilet to tub transfer bench or toilet to tub sliding chair. They can be expensive, running between $300-$400 dollars.
“I took off the sliding doors, those doors that are in showers, I took them down and I put in a pressure mounted curtain rod.” Instead of spending thousands to renovate the bathroom, this caregiver bought the chair for a few hundred dollars. It made it so much easier for her husband to shower. “For us having access to a shower was really critical because it was just how good he felt when he was cleaned with a shower and not with a wipe in the bed and I think for me that was the biggest thing. I wish somebody had said it to me earlier because it sometimes takes a while to come up with creative ideas unless you’ve seen it or heard of it….I don’t know why people don’t talk about it more.”
“I just started poking around and we had a medical supply store here in town, and they had some versions of bathroom chairs. So I just started poking around for one that would work in our space and I bought that online, Because going to the medical supply store and just walking around, looking at things, gives you an idea of what’s out there, I’m so glad we didn’t spend $10,000 to make a roll-in shower because it would have been a major remodel because of the structure, the setup of our bathroom, and might’ve been like 1$5,000, I forgot what the guy quoted us, it just didn’t make sense.
She has some more ideas to share too:
In the process of searching around, she found out about rubber threshold ramps. “Those ramps are really easy to find, rubber ramps to go over door thresholds,” she tells me. These are small ramps for getting wheelchairs over thresholds, usually about 3 inches tall. To find them, you can search for threshold ramps that either aluminum or rubber.
Finally, notice again the handheld shower head (though it is not entirely in view) and the grab bar installed in the shower. But also note another kind of bar to the right of the toilet. This is a floor to ceiling pressure mounted bar or pole. Again, this provided stability, but without having to mount a grab bar into the wall. These can be more expensive than suction grab bars, but are another possible option.