Does Your Bed-ridden Loved One Hate that Ugly Hospital Bed?

My brother-in-law, between occasional visits to a regular hospital, was confined to a hospital bed in his room for almost 40 years. He made the best of his situation, which is pretty hard to do when you are a quadriplegic.

My brother-in-law was the pastor of a small church in Wallowa, Oregon before an accident took the use of his limbs from him, but he didn't let that stop him. Instead, he continued to minister from the hospital bed in his room and frequently had a roomful of people waiting to visit with him. I often wondered how it would feel to be in his position, day after day, looking at the four walls of a small bedroom from the confines of a hospital bed.

A couple of years ago, I wrote an article here at Associated Content called, The Top Ten Gifts for Someone Who is Bed-ridden. At first, I had quite a large number of comments on the article, but as time went by, fewer and fewer people read it . Today, however, I received a comment from a man who has come up with something far better than any of the gifts my article recommended.

The man's name is Gary Owens, and, due to a debilitating disease that struck his wife in 1998, Gary decided that he wanted to make the time she was confined to her bedroom as pleasant as possible. He used his woodworking skills to design a really nice headboard for her bed; one that fit right over the head of his wife's stark looking hospital bed and instantly changed the whole look and feeling of her room.

From that first headboard, Gary formed a company called TenderCare Beds, LLC. Since Gary was a skilled woodworker to begin with, the headboards his company designs and sells have a really professional look to them. And, because he understands the importance a small thing like a new headboard can make to a chronically ill person, he goes the extra mile and makes sure each headboard is a good match for the person who will be using it.

The company has many designs to choose from, some Shaker style with matching nightstands and chests, and the wood used in each item is rich and polished looking.

No one wants to be confined to a hospital bed for even a short stay, but sometimes we don't have a choice. If someone in your family is facing such a situation, drop by the TenderCare Beds, LLC website (link shown below) and take a look at these gorgeous cover-ups that transform a sterile looking hospital bed into a cozy and elegant looking bed that will make your loved one feel better about receiving visitors any time of the night or day. The website even has a video showing how easy it is to slip the new headboards over the existing hospital bed. The almost instant improvement in décor is like magic.

They are so nice that I'm wondering if they would fit over my old, beat-up, non-hospital headboard to give my own bedroom the facelift it definitely needs.

TenderCareBeds