The Great Modular Wheelchair Ramp Saga

After sixteen months of bumping Alex up and down our front steps (while holding the storm door open) every time he needed to get to the school bus or our car, we finally installed a wheelchair ramp—yay!

I didn’t find much online when I went to research what it would take to get a wheelchair ramp on the front of our house, so forgive the detail of this rather long post—a lot of it is provided for others who might be looking for similar information and who might benefit from our experience.

I suppose there’s another reason for going into detail about what it took to get Alex his wheelchair ramp. What we’ve learned over the past eighteen months is that people with physical disabilities live in a parallel world—one in which everything is about ten times harder to accomplish than it would normally be.

Heck, getting a wheelchair ramp—just to be able to get in and out of the house safely—proved to be an epic saga, full of ups and downs. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

 

Getting ready for the new wheelchair ramp by practicing with threshold obstacles | PT demonstration

Once a month, Alex's school physical therapist does a home visit to teach us (parents and PCAs) different physical therapies. This month, she showed us how she's helping Alex "power over" threshold obstacles so he can get up ramps safely and efficiently -- a good thing, since we are installing our own ramp for him!



And here Alex is watching the workers assembling the modular aluminum wheelchair ramp in front of our house -- he jumped every time they used a power tool, which is why he's smiling!

I'm working on a post and video about the construction and assembly of this wheelchair ramp.