With all the main building work now finished, we were now waiting for the outside steplift and overhead tracking hoist in Harriet`s bedroom to be installed .
We initially had a phone call from the steplift company, to say that they could fit the lift within a week, but there had been some problems on the bespoke build of the lift system and this had to be postponed for another couple of weeks.
When the lift people finally arrived, it felt like such a relief as we knew that we would no longer need to carry Harriet from the car into house, especially if she was sleeping. Harriet was also starting to get very heavy and it was a real strain carrying her safely.
The two men managed to install the new steplift in about five hours and after running through a catalogue of tests, they were now happy that is was safe for Harriet to use.
We were then shown all the operation instructions on how to raise and lower the steplift safely, the installer also showed us what to do should the lift breakdown while in use and then we were handed the keys to the control system.
The lift system is fitted with a slight time delay and with the keys also being needed to operate it, we spent a few minutes going up and down on the lift ourselves to make sure we knew what we were doing before Harriet went on it .
The first time we took Harriet onto the lift, we were a little apprehensive in case something went wrong, but everything went well and Harriet seemed to enjoy it.
A few weeks later the tracking hoist men arrived to install the over head hoist system, which would pick Harriet up from her cot in the bedroom and carry her through into the bathroom.
This tracking hoist was fitted in just over four hours; the hoist system was then calibrated and checked to make sure that it was working correctly.
Although the hoist was now ready to use, we were unable to carry Harriet into the bathroom as Harriet had not been measured for the cradle or hammock that would be attached to the hoist system.
A few days later the occupational therapist and hoist rep, came out to measure Harriet for the cradle, Harriet was placed into the smallest cradle they had to test the size. The rep suggested that Harriet would probably need the next size down and told us that these would be ordered to arrive with the next two weeks.
Mum and Dad
