I think I mentioned some weeks ago that my wife was in hospital, she’s still there, but could possibly be emerging on 11th April.
To this end, I had a (planned) access visit from the hospital’s OT to assess any potential problems and what equipment might be needed to make life easier.
When she went into hospital (3.2.18) she couldn’t weight bear at all and was fairly floppy when sitting unsupported. The weight bearing is improving, but I don’t yet know by how much, this obviously can have huge impact on what is possible with regard to transfers and thus what is required in the way of equipment.
It had already been decided that a hospital type bed would be required and that our old double bed would have to go and a new single bed purchased for me.
The access visit came and went and all passed pleasantly (as you would expect). It is difficult however to assess all of my wife’s near future needs as her physio is still progressing and some things are definitely improving.
I asked about the dimensions of the new bed during the access visit but apart from a width of “about 1 metre” it was unknown.
There wasn’t going to be a lot of time to mess about and myself and the OT kept missing each others phone calls which I’d been making in an effort to establish the size of the wife’s new bed.
I ordered a new bed for myself and established a delivery date and I did then manage to get hold of the OT and inform her of the delivery date which would in turn enable the hospital (or whoever) to deliver the wife’s new bed.Then she dropped the bombshell of the bed’s size: it’s only actually 3’0" wide, but it’s 7’4" long!
I’ve made a scale drawing of our bedroom and card cutouts of all the furniture in there, two beds, two bedside cabinets and a dressing table.(I’m a carpenter and I’ve done this several times for new kitchens etc, and I know what I’m doing in this respect). The bedroom is not particularly small at 15’ X 11’ although the fitted wardrobes take some of that away along the 15’ length making it only about 15’ X 9’.
It just doesn’t all fit, unless we stop using the fitted wardrobes and lose the dressing table.
Next step is to establish which features of the hospital bed are essential and go back to the bed shop and see what they have that might be a sensible size.
So what was the point of the access visit when the only known piece of proposed equipment doesn’t fit?