Medical & Mobility
Buy and sell medical and mobility in Panama.
A hospital-type bed, a wheelchair or a walking frame tends to arrive at short notice, when someone comes home from hospital, and to leave quietly months later once it has done its job, which is why a second-hand one has often seen little real use. The kit, new or pre-owned, falls into two groups: mobility aids, from the transport chair a relative pushes to the rollator with a seat, and home medical equipment, from the bed itself to the commode chair beside it. Ask for measurements before anything else, because a home-care bed does not go through every door or lift in a Panama City tower in one piece.
Hospital-type beds and the rest of the home-care room:
the bed sits at the centre of home medical equipment, and the choice is manual or electric. Both lift the backrest and the knees and change the height of the frame, so whoever is caring can wash, change and turn someone without bending double. On a manual bed each movement has its own crank at the foot end, and three-function simply means three cranks. An electric bed does the same from a hand control, worth the extra when one person does all the caring. The mattress is often a separate purchase, and it has to be foam made to bend with the frame; a household mattress fights the backrest. Around the bed go the over-bed table and the commode chair on wheels, which often doubles as a shower chair.
Wheelchairs, rollators and walking frames:
among mobility aids, the opening question with a wheelchair is who does the pushing. A self-propelled chair has big rear wheels with hand rims; a transport chair has small wheels all round, folds smaller and needs someone behind it. Seat width follows the hips, and 18 inches is the usual adult size. A walking frame without wheels is lifted and set down with every step, while a rollator rolls, brakes from the handles and usually carries a seat for a pause on the way. Crutches and canes adjust for height with push buttons, and those buttons should still click home at every setting.
A hospital bed through an apartment door in El Cangrejo:
the bed is close to a metre wide and two long, more than many bedroom doors and older lifts in the city’s towers will take in one piece. Most home-care frames come apart into a headboard, a footboard and a base in sections, so ask whether this one has been taken apart before and whether the bolts and tools are still with it. Either way, it needs a pickup and two people. That cost belongs in the price. A manual bed with rails is around $1,000 new and an electric one starts near $1,500. A used bed in working order should come in several hundred dollars under that, and further without its mattress, since the buyer pays for the move and often for new foam as well.
Cranks, motors, wheel locks and salt-air rust:
check a used bed with someone lying on it. Turn every crank through its full travel; nothing should slip back. On an electric bed, run each button on the hand control and listen for a motor that strains or clicks. Check that each rail latches and the castors lock. Fold and unfold a wheelchair and test each wheel lock on a slope. The locks press on the tyre, so a worn tyre weakens them. Swing the footrests and armrests out and back: they are what goes missing from a used chair, and replacements rarely fit across makes, so ask for the make before you go. Chromed steel that has spent years in Colón or Pedasí rusts at the welds and axle bolts, while aluminium takes salt air far better. A commode or shower chair is only worth having with a seat free of cracks and a bucket that seals.
Passing on a bed or wheelchair after the recovery:
most of it goes on in good order, and a buyer decides from the listing whether the trip is worth making. For a bed, state manual or electric, the number of functions, whether it comes apart and whether the mattress and rails are included. For a chair, give the seat width, the folded width and the weight limit on the frame label. Photograph the bed raised and flat, the cranks or hand control, and any rust or torn upholstery, and clean everything before the photos. Then add the floor and whether the building has a service lift, because whoever comes for a bed needs to know if they are carrying its sections down the stairs or rolling them into a lift.