The Anonymous Widower

An Uplifting Idea

When you live alone as I do, you sometimes get up in a miserable mood.  You wonder why you bother and perhaps a better idea would be to get another bottle of cyder, sink back under the duvet and listen to the radio.  I don’t often, in that I have the responsibility of a basset hound, who has to be let out to do her business.

This morning wasn’t one of those mornings, but a friend pointed me to this item in the Daily Mail.

Ruth Amos was just 16, when she designed the StairSteady, a device to help the elderly and infirm get up the stairs more easily.  It looks very good and I suspect it will do very well.  Good luck to her!

I speak with grim experience.  My late wife’s cancer meant that in her last days she couldn’t climb the stairs to bed.  Her pride said she was going to sleep in her bed and she came down every day until the day before she died.  But our house has innumerable short stair cases and installing a stair lift would have been impossibly expensive, as we’d have needed three short ones.  But it would not have been difficult to install three of Ruth’s devices.

If you read the comments on the Daily Mail article, some are saying it is expensive.  It is not, as I suspect most have to be individually made-to-measure and designed to be robust.  For instance, if the person using the device stumbled, it would have to support the weight of the heaviest.  Strength never comes cheap!

But, because it is cheaper and more adaptable than a stair-lift, I suspect that in many cases, it will be cost-effective to install the device in a house, to keep the user in their own home.

Ruth and her idea have really got my day off on a high!

I shall be watching the progress of the StairSteady.

November 14, 2009 - Posted by AnonW | News | Ideas