Truly Blessed

For the past year or so, the stairs leading up to the second floor of our home have been my enemy. I have stood near the bottom with legs wobbling, staring upward, and trying to find the ability to keep placing one foot in front of the other to get to my destination while my hubby stood behind me with the theme song from "Rocky" blaring on his phone. I’ve crawled on my hands and knees to make my way slowly to the top, used the “army crawl” on days when my hands were too painful or useless to help, and on really bad days I’ve been carried by my hubby. Turtle Monroe and I would have “butt bounce” races down the stairs in an effort to keep laughing at the situation.

We spoke with adaptive tech, vocational rehab, and independent living reps in the hopes of finding financial assistance for a stair lift but were turned down each time. Our stairs have a landing with a turn leading to a couple more steps and this extra twist would add to the expense which was definitely beyond our price range. After a while, crawling became my new normal and as long as no one was watching, I no longer recognized it as odd. Lately though, even this was getting increasingly difficult and I once again contacted different organizations  in an effort to find a discount of some sort to make a stair lift affordable.

Turtle Mae was allowed one ride to test it out

After a few more rejections, I remembered that the National MS Society works with various companies and organizations and decided to give them a call to see if they knew who would be good to contact. There are several companies in my area who install lifts and I had no idea which was the most reputable, cheapest, and offered the best financing options. When the MS Society said they only had one listing for my area I was surprised. The woman said she would be sending them an email and I would be receiving a call sometime soon. She also said that the organization she was contacting was a group of volunteers who may ask us to pay the cost of materials, but nothing more. I was floored, thanked her, and started to think that maybe we could make this happen after all.

This was heavy and turned out to be a bit of a challenge to install

I had never heard of Hickory Grove Baptist or Hearts & Hammers until I received a phone call within the week from a gentleman who said he had been told that I needed some equipment installed. I explained that I needed a stair lift and also would be interested in a quote for a threshold ramp as well and we set a time for him to come out the next morning. Once he arrived with another guy, he again asked what exactly I might need and they immediately began measuring. They handed me an application to fill out which was just a single page stating what I needed and why. Easy enough. While I filled it out they discussed options with each other.

The ramp installation was super quick!

The first gentleman sat down beside me and asked how exactly I had heard of their organization and gotten in contact with them. That was a short and simple story, but after I told it he shook his head in wonder. The National MS Society rep I had spoken to was in Colorado and my request had been sent through three offices in two states before reaching him the day before and it had all taken less than a week. He then told me that they would definitely be able to help me with the installations and I asked how much it would come to. He looked at me and held up his fingers to form a “0”. I'm fairly certain my eyes were wide and my jaw had dropped open before I asked him if he was sure. Within that very week, a stair lift had been donated which would work for my home (except the last two steps, but they had received donations of grab bars and we decided that would work for me to get to the chair on the landing well enough). Also, they had purchased a threshold ramp for another install that ended up not fitting, but my threshold measurements showed it would fit our home perfectly. What are the odds?

Two weeks later, a crew showed up and installed the threshold ramp, grab bars, and stair lift at no cost to my family.  MS has certainly brought it’s challenges, but it has also brought me several reminders that God truly does take care of us! This isn’t the first time we’ve been blessed by others and I continue to be amazed by the generosity of this world when times seem to be tough!

Making some final adjustments

If you want to check out Hearts & Hammers, they are an amazing organization that handles bathroom remodels, ramps, stair lifts, widens doorways, etc. They are one of the many mission groups of Hickory Grove Baptist and are helping churches in other states start their own Hearts & Hammers programs. Donate, spread the word about the fantastic work that they’re doing, or volunteer to help out with one of their local groups (this particular one handles 300 jobs per year on average). The guys that came out were some of the nicest you’ll ever meet and I can’t thank them enough for the great job they did!