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Imagine that you aren’t able to get up out of that chair that you are sitting in right now. How long could you stand it? Would you be happy to even get a little help after an hour or two, even if it was only enough to move you into one other spot? What if you could move even more?
The thing that I like most about a ceiling or wall based motorized transfer system is the freedom it can provide to a person with a disability and their caregivers. A reliable system can free a person from fear of being dropped or fear of injuring a caregiver and can provide the freedom to move from seat to seat as many times a day as they want or need to. Even the most basic straight piece of track over a bed and the space beside it can be life changing for a person who could not move from bed or wheelchair without it.
That said, imagine the freedom if a person could move anywhere they want to within a room. A traverse Track System accomplishes that. I used to think that the traverse system was really only useful for group settings like a therapy gym where one set of tracks would allow people to transfer safely and quickly onto equipment anywhere in the room. Then I had the opportunity to install two units within the past few years for individuals who understood the potential the system had for their homes.
One situation was a young adult living who had one installed in his bedroom suite. His transfer areas were his bed, his wheelchair, his desk chair, and two locations within his bathroom. He and his family knew this was the most effective way to help him move anywhere he wanted to within his suite with no physical effort for his parents. The second was for a person who had been living with a spinal cord injury for over 20 years. He’d had to stay in hospital and rehab living situation for a long time following repair of a skin problem and knew he didn’t want to have any potential for rubbing that area. He wanted a system that wouldn’t cause any muscular strain for his wife. When he learned about the traverse track system, he knew he’d found his answer.
The traverse track system consists of two fixed ceiling or wall mounted parallel rails and one traverse rail that moves back and forth of the parallel rails. The manual version shown in our video can be moved almost effortlessly by a caregiver. SureHands Lift and Care Systems as usual has many options to allow us to match a person’s abilities and environment. There is an electric version that can be operated independently by a person sitting in the body support or sling. We can also connect a traverse rail to another rail and a person can move outside of the room. While a traverse track system may not be able to move a person anywhere in the physical environment, such as down their outside ramp, all over the yard, or up and down the stairs, it can come very close to moving a person anywhere inside they want to go within their home.
If you’d like to learn more about the possibility of transferring anywhere, give us a call or visit the SureHands Lift and Care Systems web site www.surehands.com. Imagine the freedom!
