LOCAL FIRM TO THE RESCUE
When a local man found himself in a bit of a fix following foot surgery, a Calne firm stepped in with the perfect solution.
As Michael Hughes prepared to undergo reconstructive surgery on his foot in December, in the back of his mind was the challenge waiting for him when he returned home after the operation, knee-high in plaster, to recuperate at his two-storey home in Devizes.
It turned out that Michael’s wife’s job held the key to a solution to his mobility quandary. Eileen works for Calne-based stairlift specialist 1st Choice Stairlifts and, when she mentioned her husband’s pending predicament to owner Coral Affleck, she came up with the perfect solution - installing a temporary stairlift at the Hughes’ home to help Michael when he came out of hospital.
The stairlift was installed in time for Michael’s return home after the operation, and now he’s well on the road to recovery. He says, “There’s no doubt it has been a huge benefit to me over the last few weeks. “For the first two weeks after the operation I had to sit with my feet up, and without the stairlift I would have been confined to my bedroom. As it was, I was able to move between rooms and up and down stairs, which made a real difference.”
Michael and Eileen travel back to Nuffield hospital in Oxford in eight weeks’ time when, all being well, the plaster will come off and Michael can begin a course of physiotherapy.
Says Eileen, “The 1st Choice service is all about making peoples’ lives easier, but I couldn’t have predicted that we’d be on the receiving end! We’re both extremely grateful to Coral, this really has made our lives so much easier since the operation.”
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