Life Without an Elevator

We are currently on day four with no working elevator in our apartment building, one that it is supposed to be handicapped-accessible. It has been a little frustrating to say the least. It was supposed to be fixed on Wednesday afternoon but we are still waiting.

No working elevator in this apartment building

It has been going out off and on recently but just once was it a major inconvenience when we were getting Faith ready to go to school and realized the elevator was not working. Needless to say, she was late for school that day.

This time we discovered the elevator was out on Monday after we called the Healing Rooms and realized they were open. We gleefully got bundled up in our winter attire - even the below-zero temperature was not going to stop us.

We ran into a major disappointment though when we got to the elevator and realized it wasn't working. We went back to our apartment and figured out what to do next. We thought about having the Healing Rooms come to us because Faith really wanted prayer but that wasn't going to cut it for Faith. She said that would be "boring."

Rob got her chair downstairs then carried Faith down and put her in it. Getting her and her chair downstairs is the relatively easy part, it's more of a challenge getting everything back up. We had a fun time at the Healing Rooms and were very blessed by their prayers and scriptures they shared with us. We were glad we made the effort to go. Upon getting back home, we decided to leave Faith's chair in the van and just bring her up.

Faith's chair has made many trips up and down the stairs this week

That evening, Faith was not a happy camper that she did not have her chair to sit in during her last feeding of the day. We tried to put her in her sit-to-stand apparatus in a sitting position but she didn't like that. I ended up sitting with her on the couch during her feeding. She was still crying for her chair when she went to bed.

The next day, we got Faith downstairs then she and her dad took me to work and they went to the clinic to get her mic-key button changed. (It had come out at school last week, thankfully her school has a full-time nurse who put it right back in).

The elevator still wasn't working when they got back home. Rob managed to get Faith and her chair upstairs by himself. Thankfully, I was able to get a ride home from work that evening so he wouldn't have to take her and her chair up and down the stairs again. One good thing in all of this is that Faith has a manual base on her chair which makes it possible to get it up and down the stairs. If she just had a power base, there would be no way we could do it.

On Wednesday, we made it to school even though we were a little late. After school, the elevator still wasn't working (the building managers had assured us it would be fixed Wednesday sometime). This morning Faith woke up with a low-grade fever and because of that combined with the freezing cold weather and no working elevator, we decided to just keep Faith home. When I got home from work, I was very dismayed to find it had still not been fixed.

There are other people in our building with whom this has been a major inconvenience for - especially those elderly and wheel-chair bound tenants on the third floor.  Many of the caretakers and those who come here from community support organizations are all very frustrated.

This really, really makes me want to live on the first floor or a different building altogether! We are really hoping and praying that when they do finally get the elevator going again it will be fixed for good this time! And I'll remember to never take a working elevator for granted!