So I have something new for you to think about. What all do I have to think about before I can go on vacation. I have some of the same things as you as far as what clothes to bring, and how many days worth, and your toiletries and all that. I have some things a little easier as I only wear cowboy boots and jeans and I have a pair of crocs that I can wear to go to a beach or the pool if I happen to wear the one pair of shorts that I brought. As far as planning things in advance as far as a room goes, that is a very mixed bag.
I have learned that when you call a hotel/motel to make a reservation for a handicap room, they really know nothing about the actual rooms if you try to ask them any questions. The last time I stayed in Nashville, I was told that they only had a handicap room with a tub in it. Now I guess there are people that are handicap that can use a semi-regular tub, but I am not one of them. Once I got there, it actually had a roll in shower. Nice bonus for me! BUUUUT I didn’t bring a shower seat with me as I didn’t see the need for one, since I didn’t have anything but a tub to use that the seat wasn’t going to work in. My point here is that even when I asked the front desk about what kind of room I was getting (literally called the day before I was there), they don’t know anything about what being handicap requires or what their rooms are besides what their screens say (even though they told me they went and looked while they put me on hold).
A hotel’s definition of a handicap room is far different than mine in a lot of cases. Usually to them, it means there might be a little more room in front of the bed. It means their door will usually have an eye hole down lower so that you can see who is outside your door if you order pizza or something. Sometimes it will have wider doors going into the room and usually has a wider door going into the bathroom, that actually swings out instead of in. By a wider door going into the bathroom, half the time it is still only just wide enough to get my chair. Comparing it to a standard room, I have actually had the issue that the door was physically too small for me to go through. As far as the toilet is concerned, I shared before how much room around one I require for my chair. The handicap rooms that I have ever stayed at, have never had room beside the toilet. I can usually sort of cheat it and go at it at an angle, similar to what I have to do in my own bathroom that is not handicap accessible like it should be.
Here is my one huge gripe about powerchairs and toilets. I struggled with every chair, that several different dealers could get, to find a chair as low as possible to fit in my truck. I still sit 18-19 inches off of the floor. However, ADA (handicap) toilets are only required to be 17-18 inches tall. If I was to make an educated guess, the shorter 17 inch tall toilets must be cheaper as every handicap hotel room seems to be this tall. Now an inch or 2 doesn’t sound like much. When you can’t get your chair that close to the toilet, with a height difference like this, using a transfer board to slide back to your chair is extremely difficult. Add in the fact that my shoulders aren’t that strong and I can’t help much with my legs and it gets harder. I am pretty sure that the last handicap room I stayed in didn’t even have an ADA toilet, which makes it 16 inches tall. I wasn’t in my new chair yet, and my chair that raised and lowered that I had to take with me that trip was about 20-21 inches tall. Needless to say dad had to come help me back to my chair, because sliding down to it was easy but that 4 inch climb back up was impossible.
Here is a new food for thought, going to the beach. How would I do something like that? Before you start googling handicap beach chairs, they do exist. If you go to the right beach they will rent you one. I honestly couldn’t tell you which beach other than I remember it is only on the east coast and I am wanting to say it is in either Virginia or North Carolina. They will sell you one too, or at least they used to. I think that company quit making them so even a good used one is still several thousands of dollars. I got to see the ocean for the first time a few years back. I chose Tybee Island, just outside of Savannah Georgia. Google told me it was the fastest place to the actual ocean and not the gulf from where I live. Silly me though, I turned traffic off to check this as I didn’t want wrecks and things of that particular day to influence my decision. Everyone told me to avoid Atlanta. Looking at it I thought how bad can it be. If I had listened I would of went somewhere else, but sometimes you go exactly where you are meant to go. I was already on a scooter at the time and could probably walk a little if I had too. I realized how truly lucky I was once I got there though. Their just so happened to be a blue mat at the beach that they roll out from the sidewalks to the high tide line in the sand. Other than one area that happens to have sand blow over it, I could drive my chair to the high tide line. The sand when the water is at low tide is fairly compact. So I drove my scooter around on the beach. They also happen to have a pier there. So when it was high tide and the water was up to the loose sand, I still had a place to go. It all was dumb luck that it worked out as good as it did. I truly feel I was meant to experience that.
I feel that it is important to mention that I know I am not alone in some of the handicap room experiences. I went to a bluegrass festival in northern Missouri, I believe the year before last. A guy came up to talk to us that had brought his daughter to it, that was also in a chair. She wasn’t as self reliant as I am, but he was asking us where we were from. Once he realized that we were also staying in a handicap room, he was asking us how the room was working for us. He shared that he went to this festival about every year, and that he tried pretty much every room he could find in the area. He told us that he was still struggling to find a room that worked really well for them.
This has left me to conclude that I need to find me a handicap travel trailer. This would allow me to be able to take it with me. It would allow me to know when I got there, that I will have a bathroom and bed that I can use. I kind of skipped over that part, but hotel beds are too close to the floor. They all seem to be like this, so I can’t travel to and from them very easy as well. Every once in awhile you will get one that seems to be ok. I guess the odds of finding one the right height is about the same as finding one that actually has a decent mattress that you can sleep on. Since I haven’t talked about how I transfer to and from bed yet, I will dive deeper on this then. The short version for now is that I need a tall bed or I struggle to transfer back into my chair.
Handicap travel trailer that are actually handicap accessible are hard to find. They use the line that everyone’s needs are different so they will customize one to work for you. I can tell you just from looking at their base models and layouts that they want to start with, that I am skeptical. I feel that they really have no idea of where to even start for making a trailer that is going to work for me. For one the toilet is always in some kind of enclosed area that you are suppose to transfer to from the front. They never have a shower that seems big enough to use. There isn’t any room around the bed for a chair. Overall they just seem like they were designed by someone who has never been around a handicap person.
As I stated on my projects or goal page one, I have been talking to a company in Oklahoma that specializes in customizing cargo, horse, and race trailers and things. My goal is simpler in design. I basically want a motel room on wheels. I need a bed and a handicap bathroom. They told me a small kitchenette on one wall would be simple and fairly cheap to add, so it is basically a custom camper. The main thing holding me back from continuing to pursue and own one of these is money. Right now all my resources are going into saving to pay for my handicap addition to the side of my house so that I can actually enjoy a handicap bedroom, bathroom, and a garage to park my very expensive because it is so specialized truck. Until then I will suffer through as I have been doing. Its not like I am going on vacation while I am trying to save money anyways! Thanks for reading!