Bum lifts

There is a big notice on the BMW garage in Bath that says ‘Get into a new Mini with the Motability Scheme’. Frankly, getting into a Mini or any other car for that matter is not my problem: I can flop into any seat you care to offer me. It is getting out again that causes me problems, or at least it does if I don’t have my trusted assistant, Sally, on hand.

The secret to getting up out of a seat is to start with my hips higher than my knees and then cantilever my upper body forward whilst applying upward motion through what is left of my quads. To be honest it is probably the action that everyone goes through to get up except in my case the movement needs to be more exaggerated to take effect. The difficult bit is getting the hips high enough to start with, because I don’t have the muscles to do that, and that is where Sally steps in. By getting her hands under my buttocks, as long as we co-ordinate the throwing forward of my upper body, she need apply minimum effort to lift my hips sufficiently to enable me to stand relatively easily.

The difficulty of course is that is the sort of intervention you can’t easily ask other people to do as it is a bit intimate, although I did make an exception the other day when out to brunch with a friend who I have known for the best part of 60 years! In general people are very keen to help you stand if they see are you in trouble but grabbing me under the arms and trying to heave me up, which is the default response, is of no help to me whatsoever. My method is inelegant but effective and is least likely to cause injury to me or the person lifting me. So if you feel the need to help lift someone can I urge you to listen to exactly what they say and only do what they tell you: the person will be far more au fait with what works for them and for you too!

There are lots of aids available of course to help with that all-important hip-raising process. I have a selection of chair raisers I can take places to get a seat high enough to stand up from in the first place, although it has caused a number of raised eyebrows as it looks like I have brought flower pots with me. The downside of that approach, assuming of course you don’t topple off the inverted pots when you slide your chair back, is that it is difficult to slide your legs under the table as the chair is now unnaturally high.

I have recently been equipped with a riser/recliner armchair, which at full extension lifts me almost to standing and, if I decided I didn’t want to get off after all, I am left clinging on for dear life, much to the amusement of our grandchildren who had endless fun raising and lowering grandad at the weekend against his will. It solves the difficulty of getting out of the comfy chair at home, but is no answer to the challenge of how to manage on the road.

To that end, the latest acquisition is a portable, spring loaded ‘ejector seat’ which replicates the bum lift technique and, as long as I don’t set the tension so strongly that it pings me across the room like a human cannon ball, allows me to get out of a normal chair with a degree of decorum in situations where the chair raisers aren’t suitable.

Its first outing provided a bit of drama as I leaned forward to whisper an answer in the pub quiz. The loss of pressure on the back of the seat caused it to deploy, trapping me between the table and chair with my upper body slumped across the table, much to the surprise of all concerned; although maybe the main surprise was that I knew an answer to the quiz!  I think we had set the tension too high on the lifting mechanism. 😂

The downside of all these aids I now rely on is that we need, not a Mini but a small van to transport the chair raisers, the ejector seat, the stroller, the half step and the raised toilet seat that I take with me whenever we go to stay with someone. It is like having small children to transport all over again. I wonder if they do a Ford Transit on the Motability Scheme instead?