Paula Helps Carrie Get High!

That's our family room in the picture.

That's Carrie - hanging from the ceiling. And nope, that isn't a trapeze she's hanging from. There's an electric winch attached to the ceiling, and Carrie (in an upper body harness) is hanging from the winch.

Why Carrie is Hanging Around

Paula lost the ability to stand on her own sometime around 1998. From then on, she needed help to transfer in and out of her wheelchair.

Paula would wake at 7 in the morning and someone had to move her from bed to her wheelchair. After Paula wheeled to the bathroom, someone had to lift her up, pull down her clothing, and transfer her to the toilet.

I kept threatening to put a padded seat on the toilet so Paula could just stay there all day, but Paula always thought I was joking. So someone had to lift Paula up off the toilet, pull up her clothes, and then put her back into the wheelchair.

After brushing her teeth and eating breakfast, Paula would wheel over to her armchair and someone would have to lift her up and put her into her arm chair.

When you add in a lunchtime trip to the bathroom before going to bed for her nap, a repeat of the morning routine after her nap, a trip or two to the bathroom before bedtime, and a final trip to bed, Paula was lifted at least 14 times a day. On days when we gave her a shower or she had to make extra trips to the bathroom, she might be lifted as many as 20 times a day. If Paula weighed 165 pounds, that's moving between 2,300 and 3,300 pounds a day.

While Chris, Brian, Sarah, Carrie and I have all grown accustomed to moving Paula around (think of it as weight lifting with a very flexible weight), other folks (including some of the home health care workers who sometimes helped out) had problems moving Paula. And on those occasions when I hurt my back moving Paula, it was very painful for me to continue moving her until I healed.

So I came up with the idea of hanging a winch over Paula's chair, making an upper-body harness, and using the winch to lift and lower her. I bought the winches and Paula's sister Amy came over to do the sewing on the harness. It took a while, but we finally got a harness that worked.

Put yourself in Paula's shoes for a moment. You're in a family that has strapped a life jacket on you, stood you up on a dock, and lot you PLOP into a lake. Your family has put you in a wheelchair and carried you up, over, and through the obstacles on a miniature golf course. They regularly make your wheelchair pop wheelies while you're in it. And now they want to hang you from the ceiling in a home-made harness attached to a winch contraption that looks like it was made by Rube Goldberg on a bad day.

So Chris came up with the idea of letting Paula operate the contraption while someone else was in the harness. He felt that it was only fair to let Paula do onto others as we were going to do onto her.

So she sat in her wheelchair and pushed the control buttons to raise and lower the harness as the kids took turns swinging from the ceiling. And swing they did, with Paula laughing and having a grand old time. And, of course, the kids were laughing and having a grand old time as Paula pushed the button to lift them high into the air. Who would have thought that Paula would have become a pusher helping our kids get high?

You'll notice that in this picture, Chris' feet are no where near the ground. That's because he's using the lift as a swing. Kids will be kids.

I'd like to thank my "soccer buddies" for a gift at Christmas of 2002 made all this fun possible.

When Paula died, we were just about to make a final version of the harness and install additional winches above her bed, above the toilet, and in the shower.

With all the winches in place, even the most petite home health care worker would have been able to help Paula through her entire daily routine.

I don't know that Paula would have ever been swinging around like the kids, but she sure like the fact that the winch contraption would keep us from hurting our backs as we moved her from bed to bathroom and then to her easy chair.

Click Here for the PaulaFish.com Table of Contents

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Click Here to visit our Customized Creations web site. Customized Creations is the business I started so I can work from home and take care of Paula.