February 4, 2025
REquipment’s success stories are rolling, one to the next (or, in this case, skating).
Our last post featured Cashen, a little boy who is the proud owner of a new-to-him Aero Z lightweight manual wheelchair from REquipment. This post features Cashen’s friend Hazel and her Rifton gait trainer.
With her mom’s help, Hazel is making excellent and creative use of our program.
We learned Hazel’s REquipment story when her mom, Liz, shared Cashen’s on her Facebook page.
“Hazey’s friend Cashen got some cool wheels! So thankful for this program. Hazel got a bath seat and a gait trainer after she was denied by insurance. Apparently, you need to know how to walk to be approved for a gait trainer.”
Needless to say, we are so happy to make such a big difference for Hazel.
Liz’s experience with insurance denial is all too common. These are the crazy hoops and hurdles REquipment was designed to avoid. Insurance providers ask families to prove a child can benefit from equipment before they will provide it. Families must somehow get their hands on the equipment they are applying for and document their child’s developmental benefit. The process can take months. And by the time the equipment arrives, the child may need something else.
Liz plans to donate Hazel’s gait trainer back to REquipment when she outgrows it. By paying it forward in this way, that piece of equipment will make a developmental difference to another child.
In the meantime, she and Hazel are having a blast using it in creative ways.
After we spied this picture of Hazel ice skating on Facebook, we wanted to know more.
REQ: What was it like obtaining equipment from us?
Liz: Oh, it was so easy! I had no idea it would be so easy and that it’s just $20 for delivery!
REQ: What has the bath seat made possible for Hazel?
Liz: Before, I was bending over and trying to hold her in the tub, and she’d be moving all around, a wiggly worm. It’s so much simpler to have her sitting in a seat and be able to save my back. Also, she loves it.
REQ: Please do tell us the story of the skating rink.
Liz: We just started doing an adapted skating program. It’s called Special Skates through Reading Recreation Dept., and they have participants with a range of disabilities but limited experience with physical disabilities. So, they were happy to have her come with the gait trainer. Well, the skates added two inches of height, and she’s getting close to being too big for the gait trainer anyway. So, the following week, I looked around the house to figure out how to make it so she could stand up. I used little Tupperware containers with cardboard inside.
REQ: So that’s what’s under those wheels!
Liz: Yeah. And the volunteers twirl her around. She loves it. Volunteers pair up with all the kids. The boys and girls Reading hockey teams and the skating club all volunteer, and it’s so nice. All the kids, including these high school kids, just want to be there.
REQ: How did you learn about REquipment?
Liz: A woman who works at Perkins told me. She has a daughter who has had equipment from REquipment. I’ll put you in touch with her.
REQ: Thank you! It’s such fun to have these stories snowballing.
Do you use your REquiment device in a creative way? We’d love your story and picture, too. Email outreach @ dmereuse.org
