Elaine explains how they have adapted their home for her husband and how much it costs.
Transcript
Yes, Assistive Devices Program in Ontario enabled us to buy: he has, [name husband] has a scooter suitable in the house; and he has a big old scooter that we’ve had for years that he uses outside on the lawn, and he has a trailer hitch on it even—I think he’s the only guy with a scooter and a trailer hitch—and he has fun with that outside; and then we have one for the van. So, we have a scooter larger than the one from the house, and we can take that shopping and take that wherever we need to go.
And in the van there’s a lift. So the lift, I think it was almost $4,000, and we had to pay that. But the scooter on the lift, there again, I think we only paid $600 for it, and it’s probably a $2,000 scooter. So the government kicked in for that, and of course anything spent because of a chronic illness is a tax deduction. So we always save all our receipts for the drugs that we pay, and the dispensing fees and everything. It adds up pretty sizable. Some years it’s been around $10,000 that we’ve laid out for scooters and walkers and drugs.
Yeah, it’s expensive but we’re fortunate. He’s got a good pension and we live simply and those things become priority. So if I was looking at a fancy fur coat that wouldn’t be on the priority list at all. A new scooter overrides that any day. So you just have to make your choices. I feel very badly for people that don’t have a decent pension, and they’re inability to say, buy a van to fit the scooter. It’s tough yeah, very tough.
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