LIFE & CAREGIVING: I’ve had some photos of how I adapted the dining room into a safe bedroom for Kathy and I thought I would share them. Once it was clear that Kathy had Huntington’s I knew that I would have to start making adaptations like more hand rails and things. As she started getting more and more unsteady on the stairs I moved our bedroom down the stairs. So now we are sleeping in the dining room. I’ll be trying to fix up the old bedroom into a new workspace for design and music but it still makes me a little sad when I go in there.
This first picture is a panorama made from two photos I took with my fish eye lens. That’s why everything looks so bent out of shape (but the house is structurally crooked too). Left to right you can see a cheap bookshelf I attached to the wall and dressed up with wood trim. The table next to it was an art project Kathy made. There are cut out letters hanging on strings underneath. Marty sleeps on the floor between our bed and the bookshelf. Kathy created the orange artwork in the corner from some of my old clothes. It was the only way she could get me to wear something different. The wardrobe was something we bought in Denver. We had our stereo in it for a while. Dilcia, our aide, helped me organize her clothes. I made the lamp hanging from the ceiling from sticks, tracing paper and wire fencing. It was really designed as a table lamp.
I dress and undress Kathy from that chair with the green towel on it. There is barely enough room to get her wheelchair through the space to the right of the bed and the little Ikea dressers at the foot of the bed. When her body is tired and her trunk is bent over I have to be careful so her head or arm doesn’t bang into something. Because I have to keep her head elevated, Kathy always slides down toward the foot of the bed. That pink pillow is crammed in there to keep her feet from getting tangled between the bars of the foot of the bed.
This is a photo taken earlier of the dressers. That tennis ball was on there for a while when Kathy was still walking. I was afraid she would hit herself on the iron finial if she fell. The blue thing on the table is a humidifier to help with her congestion but I’m not sure how much it helps. That is another piece of Kathy’s art above the headboard. She was selling and leasing corporate art when we lived in Denver.
The wardrobe was actually an antique school locker from a Denver school. I think we bought it at an antiques store when we lived there. Her shoes and Depends are on the bottom shelf. PJs are next followed by pants and tops. I can reach most of it from the chair. There is an actual closet at the foot of the stairs where we used to keep all of our outer wear like coats and my suit jackets are in there. I used to need to wear decent clothes to work. The internet changed that:-)
This last photo is a view towards the stairway and the closet. I hung too many hooks on the wall thinking that was how she would hang her clothes. But she ended up needing help with all that stuff pretty soon after it was set up. There is a doorway to the right of that Santa light (I guess I should put that away). A realtor called it the doorway of doom because it opens on to the roof with no balcony. To the far right on the floor is the heat register. Marty hangs out there as if it were a fireplace.
