Life with a Rampvan - The Fun of a Handicap Vehicle with an Attitude

My mother was diagnosed with ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis or Lou Gehrig's Disease) in October 2006 (my other ALS-related lenses are linked at the bottom of this page). ALS causes you to lose function in your body so before long, mom was on a walker, then a wheelchair, and finally a motorized wheelchair.

Getting around town with a wheelchair is nuts. She can't get out of the wheelchair and into a car at all now, and I am no bodybuilder. Even using good body mechanics can floor me if I have to get her in and out several times in a day. I wasn't unwilling to do that - she was unwilling to make me. Having the motorized wheelchair made life in general easier for her anyway, so it was the obvious direction to go.

Big electric wheelchairs don't travel well though unless you have a rampvan. We have a used 2004 Toyota Sienna with a ramp that comes out of the side. If mom wanted to drive we could take out the seat and lock her wheelchair in place as well. Usually, she just likes to ride along in the middle of the van.

That is how I became experienced in these matters. Driving across country in one gave me a LOT of insight too. So I hope you find some useful and sometimes amusing information.

By far, the most annoying thing we've come across has to do with other human beings. Particularly those in parking lots. Not all of them - just an ever-present few who try to make life interesting.

Our van needs two spaces, one for the van and one for the ramp. That's what those "van-accessible" spots are for. Sometimes another handicapped person needs a space and the only one available is the van-accessible one. Sometimes, a fully functional person will park in a handicap spot because, well, that person is a nimrod. In those cases we have to search out two spots and let mom drive her wheelchair to the store/restaurant/whatever.

After pulling in...that's when the fun begins. We'll let the ramp out and mom will be halfway down when Evil Knievel swings into the adjoining space, only stopped by the mad waving of hands and screaming I or my friend will do. It's one thing to be in a hurry, but some of these people have the audacity to wait until mom is out of the way and then pull in beside the van, knowing we will need to let the ramp out when we need to get back in the van. They just don't care. So we have to pull out and load mom up while people waiting to come down the aisle honk at us.

We don't so much hold it against people who come in after we're out of sight - perhaps they have bad vision when it comes to the big "please park eight feet away" sticker on our van.

I've solved both of those problems I'm happy to say, with my secret weapon - traffic cones! I bought three (available for less than $5 each on Amazon) and we take them everywhere. First thing we do after pulling into a spot is take those bad boys out and set them up in the empty adjoining space. Mom comes out of the van freely and we leave the cones there. This has worked flawlessly so far. People either a) assume the space isn't fit for cars or b) wonder so much about them that they look the van over and see the handicap stickers on the side. It's a $15 investment I'm proud to have made. You can get some on Amazon.

Imagine a regular van and how far off the ground it is. Now imagine you've put a big mechanical box underneath that shoots out a ramp on command. You can't stuff that thing very far up into the undercarriage so you have no choice but to limit your space underneath and let it hang down a bit.

This makes life very entertaining. My mom is fond of saying that our van would scrape over a petrified ant. It's not quite that bad but we do scrape bad over high bumps in parking lot entrances, high speed bumps and other such road lifters. Speed tables are impossible. It takes some getting used to but we pretty much know what to avoid now. We've scraped hundreds of times and it hasn't seemed to hurt the conversion but it does cause us to cringe mightily. There's nothing you can do about it but avoid speed tables and any parking lot exit with a big dip at the end.

I can only speak about our van but I will say I've heard similar stories from other people. We're pretty sure the ramp makes a van possessed.

Some days the door does not want to open all the way and you have to pull it to get the ramp to come down. Sometimes the door will open but the ramp won't come out. Sometimes a light will come on for no reason with no connection to anything and mysteriously never come on again.

This might make you worry but it shouldn't because we know how to fix it. There are two methods:

1. Make an appointment with your conversion company for a checkup. This will terrify the van into working properly. Works every time.

2. Go tell someone about it and make them come out to watch. Just to aggravate you, the van will suddenly work perfectly and you will look like an idiot. This works even better than making an appointment! It hasn't failed yet!

Despite some of the "fun" our van can bring, it is also a great addition to the family. I don't know what we'd do without it. Mom just rolls in, we lock her down and off we go. She doesn't have to use any effort at all, and our effort is very minimal.

It wasn't very cheap of course, and I know that can be a problem. If it hadn't been for a small unexpected inheritance my mother got, she'd have spent her savings. All I can say is that several conversion companies I researched offer financing. If anyone reading this knows of ways I can help others financially when it comes to getting a rampvan, please let me know so I can post them here.

Feel free to visit me at my other sites or see my lensography page for a list of all my lenses. Thanks for visiting! For my experiences as a caregiver, visit ALSCaregiver.com