Wheelchair Transportation for Thanksgiving Dinner in Massachusetts

Thanksgiving falls on Thursday, November 26 this year. If somebody in your family uses a wheelchair and the dinner is at a house they have not been to in a while, the thing to sort out is not the turkey. It is the four steps at the front door.

Can you take my mother to Thanksgiving dinner?

Yes. Our wheelchair accessible vans run to private homes, not only to hospitals and clinics. A ride to your sister's house in Dedham is the same service as a ride to an appointment, and Thanksgiving is one of the days we plan for every year.

Your mother stays in her own chair, secured, and goes up the ramp. We take her door to door, not curb to curb. And we come back for her at the end, which is the part families forget to arrange and then end up solving badly at nine at night.

The problem is not the ride. It is my sister's front steps.

This is the real Thanksgiving problem and almost nobody plans for it. Hospitals are accessible. Houses are not. Your sister's house has three or four steps up to the front door, a storm door that opens the wrong way, and no ramp, and nobody in the family thought about it because everybody else just walks up.

What usually happens is that two nephews try to carry the chair. That is how people get dropped and how backs get hurt, and it is how an older person decides never to leave the house again.

We run a stair assistance service for exactly this. Two trained staff and an electric stair chair, $200 a visit , no ramp required and no construction. You can book it for the arrival, the departure, or both. Our page on getting a wheelchair user up and down stairs without a ramp explains how it works, and stair assistance for weddings, funerals and family events covers the same thing for other occasions.

What should I ask my sister before the day?

Text her this week, not the night before. Five questions, and the answers decide what we send.

• How many steps, at which door? Sometimes the back or side door has one step instead of five and solves the whole thing. Ask her to count them and send a photo.
• How wide is the doorway? Older homes often have narrow interior doors. A standard chair needs about 32 inches of clear opening, and plenty of 1920s doorways do not have it.
• Is there a bathroom on the main floor? If the only bathroom is up a flight of stairs, you need to know that now and not at three in the afternoon.
• Where can the van pull in? We need room beside the vehicle to put a ramp down. A tight street with cars both sides on a holiday is worth knowing about in advance.
• Can the chair actually get to the table? Ask her to clear a path and pull one dining chair out before anyone arrives. Nobody wants to be parked at the end of the hallway looking in.

What does it cost?

We publish our rates so you can decide without calling for a quote.

• Wheelchair accessible transportation: $115 each way , $230 round trip within five miles, then $2 a mile beyond that.
• Stair assistance: $200 a visit , two trained staff and an electric stair chair.
• A home health aide, if you want one with her through the day: $45 an hour , one to eight hours, no minimum contract.

So a typical Thanksgiving looks like this. Round trip from Woburn to a house eight miles away, $230 plus $6 for the extra three miles each way, call it $242. Stair assistance at the house, $200. Total around $442 for the day, and she is at the table.

Split four ways among siblings that is about $110 each. Worth saying out loud in the family group chat, because somebody usually assumes it is unaffordable and nobody checks.

How far ahead should I book?

Now. Thanksgiving Day is one of the few days of the year where the whole state wants the same two hours, which is late morning out and early evening back. Our vans and our stair teams are finite and they book up for that window first.

Two things make a booking easy to hold. Give us a pickup time and a loose return window rather than an exact minute, and tell us about the steps when you book rather than when we arrive. A stair team is separate staffing from a van, so we cannot conjure one on the doorstep.

If Christmas is also in the plan, book both at once. We wrote the same warning last year in plan ahead for Christmas transportation and the people who read it in November got the time they wanted.

How long should she stay?

Shorter than you think. Three to four hours is the sweet spot for most older adults, and arriving an hour before the meal and leaving an hour after it is a good shape. A long loud day in an unfamiliar house is exhausting in a way that does not show until the ride home.

Leave while it is still going well. The version everybody remembers fondly is the one that ended twenty minutes early, not the one that ended because she was done.

What if she has memory problems?

Keep it smaller and earlier. Crowds, noise and a strange house are hard, and late afternoon is often the worst part of the day. An earlier sitting, a quiet room she can retreat to, and a few familiar faces rather than twenty people all work better than the full event.

An aide who comes along for four hours, at $180, takes the job of watching her off whoever is cooking. That person can then actually host.

What if the travel is just too much this year?

Then do not do it, and do not feel bad. Move Thanksgiving to her instead. Two or three family members at her kitchen table with plates brought over is a real Thanksgiving, and an aide for four hours can cook, serve and clean up so the visit is a visit rather than a shift.

One more thing worth saying. If this is the first time you have seen your parent in months, pay attention this week to the weight loss, the empty fridge, the unopened mail and the clothes that are not clean. Thanksgiving is when families notice. Our page on signs an older parent needs help at home lists what to look for while you are there.

How to book

Call 781 957 8076 or email info@careremedyinc.com. Tell us the pickup address, the dinner address, the time you want to arrive, and whether there are steps at either end. If you are not sure about the steps, say so and we will plan for them.

We serve Greater Boston from our Woburn office, Western Massachusetts from Springfield, and the South Shore from Brockton.