My Equipment and Gadgets - Part 6

Carrying on with my last post, about the switches on my clipboard on my bed, although I learned approximately where my switch for my lamp is, I still have problems with finding it in the dark because I have to feel for it with my foot whilst my foot is under the covers… So, to help with this, I bought some glow-in-the-dark stickers. I bought different-sized circular stickers and one big roll of glow-in-the-dark tape, I bought both because I didn’t know which would be best. The round stickers were too small, so I used the tape. Originally, I just stuck a small square in the middle of the switch, but I still struggled to find it, so I stuck a long strip on it, from one end of the switch to the other. This works brilliantly.

When I first got my clipboard, I found that it kept banging on the side of my bed rail as I moved and made an awful racket! I had some half pipe insulation tubes in my wardrobe that my brother gave me, so I used them to tie onto the rail with Velcro cable ties. However, I found an issue with this: Over time, the pipe insulation twisted around, meaning that there was nothing to stop the clipboard from banging. I thought about how to resolve this problem for a while, and then came up with the idea of getting seatbelt shoulder pads! This works incredibly well because even if the pads twist, the rail bars are still covered.

As you probably know, I have a hoist in my bedroom and living room for transfers should I need them, however, when I moved into my flat, I found quite a big problem with the hoist in my bedroom… I can’t be the only one who has said this, but the lights on the hoist kept me awake! Now, people say “close your eyes and you won’t see them”, but it isn’t that simple for me. My CP means that I can’t always shut my eyes and keep them shut when I want to because I can’t control the muscles. People often get extremely confused when I tell them, but it’s quite simple really: My CP affects every muscle in my body, including the muscles in my eyes, meaning that I can’t shut my eyes on demand. I can blink because that’s an involuntary reflex, but I can’t shut my eyes just like that. If I really try to shut my eyes, I can sometimes close them for a few seconds, but it takes a lot of effort and they spring open again anyway, however, they do shut naturally when I fall asleep. I am always having to explain this to people; it’s almost like the concept is completely alien to them, which can be quite amusing but irritating at the same time because I’ve explained this countless times before.

So, with this in mind, I have stuck Blutac on the small light on my hoist to minimise the amount of light glowing out into the room. This solution isn’t the best because over time, Blutac has the tendency to get thinner, so I have to re-do it. There is another bright light on the power box on the wall, and I originally used Blutac on this light too, but one of my live-in carers had the idea of putting a flannel over this, and this works really well![575]

I understand why hoists are like this, but I think it’s ridiculous that you can’t switch these lights off. You would think that they could come up with a solution to this issue, wouldn’t you? When the engineer came out to service my hoists and other equipment, I asked if he had a better idea, but he said that I had done the best thing.

Moving onto the penultimate point, my mum has just made me a fantastic blackout blind for my bedroom window. “Is this really an accessibility adaption?” I hear you ask, and after a lot of thought, I realised that yes, it is because of the sensory aspect… As you know, the sun rises in the east, so like the other window, the sun comes straight through my bedroom window, meaning that I have been waking up at seven or earlier in the morning… I know a lot of people get up earlier than that, but I like to get up around 8:30, so being woken up at some ungodly hour is very irritating! My new blind means that my bedroom stays dark. It’s brilliant!

Finally, I have a door stop to make it easier for me to get in and out of my front door in my wheelchair and walking frame. I can’t say that this works one-hundred percent because my front door is extremely heavy – I’m pretty sure that it’s a fire door. If the door stop is put at a certain angle, it holds the door just enough for me to get through most of the time. I wish I could make the door stop heavier. When I got my flat, I was given the option to get door openers along with the window openers; I decided not to go for the door openers because I always have someone with me, but in hindsight, maybe it would have been good to get them for the front door because when I’m in my manual wheelchair, someone needs to navigate me through the door whilst holding it open. When I’m in my electric wheelchair, I have to be extremely careful to squeeze past the person holding the door open without running their feet over…

There are lots of things that I have acquired to make my flat more accessible to me. I’m incredibly grateful for all the adaptions, equipment and gadgets that I have, small and large. Without these, I would not be able to do half of the things I can now!  Have you found something else that helps you?