Parkinsons at Home

Bedroom Safety Ideas


First priority
is to clear any furniture and/or throw rugs between the bed and bathroom.  The only exception I would make is:  

if you have something like hardwood floor, you may need a rubberized bathroom mat about 36” wide in the locations where the patients  

feet might hit the floor when getting out of bed.  Cal’s feet would slide before I figured that one out. 

 

 

Bedroom 

             

Railing for bed – Adjustable Height Bed Safety Rail  

There a LOT of styles to choose from, the type we used slipped under the mattress (the part under the mattress extended about  

3 feet it seemed to be far enough to keep the railing stable when Cal was getting up).  We used 2 railing, one at the head of the  

bed and one at the foot of the bed.  There was about 2’ – 3’ between the two which allowed Cal to use them like grab bars to stand up. 

 

“Friendly Bed” (Bill-Ray Home Mobility, LLC in Appleton, WI. (920) 257-4001 – www.FriendlyBeds.com, also made in America). 

This business is no longer in business.  Apparently, Bill and/or Ray was an Engineer that designed and built this to help a friend 

that had had a stroke that resulted in him having limited mobility.  This was a fantastic design and safe piece of equipment that was  

one of the major reason that we were able to keep Cal at home through his life with Parkinson’s. 

 

I am not sure what to suggest on finding something similar, but I do suggest/recommend DO NOT do an internet search for a “bed trapeze.” 

If you do, you may be spending a LOT of time cleaning up a LOT of unwanted emails.   

 

I don’t remember exactly how I found this legit company, but was it probably showed up among the porn websites that showed up when I did the original “bed trapeze” search.  When I found the website, I contacted the Police Department in Appleton, WI (We live way across the country from Wisconsin) the Police Department had no problems with the company, but suggested I contact Appleton’s City Government to see if they were a business in good standing with the city.  Someone in the office was heading to lunch and said he would drive by the address to check if there was a physical business at that address.  When he returned and before I got the call back, someone else in the office had attended a small business fair and knew about them and confirmed it was a small business and it was real.

-Peg