Equipment Jenga
Carolyn Voisey
Mum to one incredible little dude, I work full time in higher education and have my own small business as a jewellery designer/creator. I love noth...
Like so many other families of complex needs kiddos, we are getting ready for the annual summer game known as ‘and where are we going to put this then’?! Yes folks, it is that time again – equipment is coming home from school.
This is the cause of increasingly regular bouts of hysteria to hit in our household, and this year especially; as the return of the Dude’s standing frame has coincided with his three month continence AND feeding supply deliveries…
It was almost five years ago that we went through the arduous process of adapting our home to better meet our son’s needs, and I can still remember the Council rep for the DFG funding telling us bluntly that we couldn’t use those funds to put in storage for our son’s medical supplies or equipment.
In fairness, the same individual also proposed a design which left us without a kitchen so you can probably imagine the level of contempt he was held in, but the fact of the matter is that storage is not considered an essential. Even for families with medically complex individuals.
We are fortunate; our house is a dormer bungalow, something of a rarity these days.
For those who don’t know what this is, its where a first floor has been created out of the roof space to leave a small attic level. For us, this has meant that all our living space and bedrooms are on the ground floor, alongside the Dude’s wet room. The first floor, where most families would have their bedrooms, is used mainly for storage of his supplies (although we have kept the original master bedroom up there for when grandparents and friends visit).
Even with all this however, we still find that every year when his equipment from school comes home, trying to fit everything in is a skill in itself.
Fortunately for us, this year the only item coming home for the holidays is my son’s standing frame – a monolith of a thing the size of a dining table, that rotates through 90 degrees. Friend’s children will have standing frames, walkers, physio equipment and more coming home over the next few days. All that remains to be done is to shift the (many) boxes of syringes, pads etc out of the hallway to make space. Happy summer everyone!
