Working on a portable hospital bed. I use a hospital bed at home, because I can't sit up on my own due to muscular dystrophy. The bed raises me up to a nearly sitting position, then I can slide over to my powerchair. But when we travel, Chris has to help me get out of bed. This is rather inconvenient.

I thought I might put a hospital bed in the RV, but there really isn't enough room for one. So, decided to try to make my own. I bought a piece of 1/2" plywood and cut it into various pieces. Essentially, have three pieces 33" wide and fashioned them together. Longer piece on the bottom, with a shorter piece fastened on top with screws in the middle towards the foot end and the other about 30" long as the head board fastened to the shorter piece cross-wise with a piano hinge, making a flap that can be raised and lowered. Purchased an Okin Deltadrive actuator kit from Amazon (see above photo) to hook up under the head flap to raise it up and down pushing off the bottom board.

I also purchased an inexpensive rollaway bed that we can store in the RV. When we're ready to turn in for the night, we'll set up the rollaway with my plywood bed lift under the mattress. It has a handheld remote with buttons to raise and lower the head. The power supply and controller can be plugged in to 110v or it can work on nine volt batteries. Perfect for RV.

Am now thinking that this could probably work in hotels too. May cut the bottom board off and make all pieces narrower so it's not so long and bulky and we can make a carrying case for it. When we're travelling in the van, I can ask the hotels we book for a rollaway, then slip this under the mattress. Woo hoo! Instant hospital bed! And won't have to bug Chris to get me up.