Welcome to Jurassic Park

Whenever I think about using a patient lift, I see the scene in Jurassic Park where they've got a cow in a sling, and they're lowering it into the dinosaur pen.

Some of the adaptations I've had to make to accommodate advancing MS-related disability have been fairly easy for me. Not physically, or financially, necessarily, but emotionally; acknowledging that it was a step I needed to take. Cane? Manual wheelchair? Adaptive driving controls? No problem. Makes life easier. Voice recognition software? Sounds kind of cool. Other adaptations, for reasons that are not entirely clear to me, I fought tooth and nail, long past the point where a reasonable person would've given in. Nothing rational, I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Letting someone help me eat? Sorry, no. Power wheelchair? No. No way. Don't want to go there.

Patient lift?

The rehab medicine guy wrote me a prescription for a lift the first time I saw him, over a year ago. I took it, thought "Yeah, yeah, whatever, I'm not even close to needing this," and stashed it someplace. Last time I saw him, he wrote me another one. As much as I'd like to lose this one too, I need to get real. Before we can realistically expect anyone to provide home care backup or respite for Scarecrow, we need to have a lift.

If Scarecrow and Tuffy hadn't been wrestlers, we would've had to resort to this long ago. They're both strong, fit, and know how to move another person around. Even so, as Scarecrow has had to provide more and more of the muscle power, the antics involved in transfers and getting dressed have evolved from a fairly conventional stand and pivot to a series of bizarre contortions that I can't reasonably expect anyone else to manage. It's getting harder and harder for Scarecrow to do it. It's not safe.

So, the lift. We're there. It's time.

Talk about adding insult to injury, I not only have to accept adaptive equipment I really really really never wanted to use, I have to go through the hellish process involved in procuring durable medical equipment to get it. I'm still trying to get a head array control for my power chair, for criminy sake. Not happy. Not even a little bit. Don't tell me how lucky I am to have insurance that will cover most of the cost. I'm not ready to look on the bright side. I need to be crabby for a little while. Don't tell me it's my fault for having put it off so long. I'm not ready to be reasonable.

Welcome to Jurassic Park.