Medline Drop-Arm Commode

This has been a terrific help for my mom. We bought this quite some time ago so it's been through plenty of use. After my mom had a heart attack and surgery, she was pretty weak and we decided to get a portable commode. At first we tried buying a portable commode from the local drug store but it was very flimsy and uncomfortable for my mom. The Medline commode was a huge improvement because it was quite sturdy and comfortable for her. All of the metal parts are solid steel and the legs are easily adjusted for height. The seat is cushioned with a good quality cover and while it's firm, it's not too hard. Thank the LORD she gained enough strength so that we didn't need to use it as a portable commode but we have continued to use it as a replacement for a raised-height seat on her toilet and it's been a great help there too. (We just took out the plastic "bucket" and raised the leg height a little.) The side arms are set at a good height for her to use when sitting down or getting up. Assembly was also very easy. At first I was concerned because I couldn't find any instructions but then I realized there were just a few parts to assemble and it obvious how they went together. Finally, the vendor we used got us the item in just a couple of days even though we didn't request expedited shipping. If you or someone you know needs a portable commode, this is the one to get.

This MEDLINE PADDED DROP-ARM COMMODE (Guardian Signature Model G98204) works really well as an extremely sturdy toilet safety frame. The drop arms lock solidly, and won't disengage without some pressure on the release buttons. Also, the buttons are well-placed to avoid accidental release. The padded seat is comfortable, and is a little wider than a standard toilet seat (a good feature). The included commode pail has a handle and a lid. The handle can be removed. This is a very tall commode. When the legs are in the next-to-highest position, the padded seat is 23-1/2" from the floor. (The unpadded seat on my older-model Invacare commode is 21" from the floor when the legs are at the highest position.) At the highest position, the included splash guard is barely long enough to reach the toilet bowl. The frame height is easy to adjust with the pop-up buttons in the legs. You'll need a large Phillips screwdriver to set this up, either as a commode or a safety frame. The padded seat arrives with screwed-on brackets that must be removed and reattached to secure the seat to the commode frame. It took me about 15 minutes, working by myself; if I'd had someone to hold the frame, it would have taken less than 5 minutes. The padded back is easily attached with more pop-up buttons; if you're using this as a safety frame, you don't attach the padded back. According to the instructions, the commode "can be easily cleaned with regular household cleaning products", but not with abrasive powders or scouring pads. The grips on the arms should be cleaned only with mild soap, detergent, or household cleaner. So far, in my experience, cleaning is very easy.

So happy I purchased this upgraded type commode for my husband. The cushioned seat is comfortable he says. I like that it's sturdy. NOTE: If you have a bidet, you my not be able to use the back rest, but it's still a great buy.

This commode is sturdy, fairly comfortable and affordable. It is essential for those recovering from surgery or having mobility issues. I'm very happy to have purchased mine. I have MS (multiple sclerosis) and can no longer walk. MS can cause bowel and bladder problems. Having this next to my bed with the armrest down is great! It's so easy to transfer to. Love the height adjustable legs! Regarding the statements made by reviewers on the accompanying little round, gray bucket...I agree, it's not the best design. Unless it is placed in a spot specifically underneath you, well, let's just say the potential for missing the mark is high! Especially if you are in a bit of a *ahem* hurry...you know. Anyway, I also purchased a reviewer recommended Rubbermaid Roughneck 15 quart bucket. Easy to find right here in Amazon. Mine was in the color royal blue, measuring 14.5"L x 11"W x 9.2"H. Works very well! Had this commode come with a receptacle like this it definitely deserves 5 stars! Very satisfied with the purchase and I thank the reviewers who made mention of the replacement bucket! Buy it, you'll be glad you did. Update 10/17/24: This Commode continues to be of great service. I just wanted to let everyone know that 8 gallon trash bags will fit the Rubbermaid bucket very well. Make your life easier and line the bucket for ease of disposal.

The absolutely only thing that I don’t like is the padded seat. Now don’t get me wrong, it is very comfortable to sit on, and the seat is warm as opposed to a cold hard plastic seat. But always having to sanitize the padded seat leaves a lot to be desired but it can’t be helped. There is a metal shelf that the seat rests on and it was rusty looking from the very first and it stays rusty and very unsightly, it’s hard to tell if you have Fecal matter on it so I am continually cleaning it and the rust comes off onto the cleaning cloth so you can never tell if it’s clean enough. That’s only one of the bad things about this chair. You have to remove the complete toilet seat and lid of your toilet in order to use this chair. And that makes the toilet unusable for men and women if they want to use the regular toilet to sit on. I wasn’t expecting that. The toilet chair did not sit on the toilet well if the back of the chair was left on so we have to use it without the back. But having access to lowering the arms has been very helpful. My 94 year old mother was scraping her hand and left it bleeding when using other chairs and if she leaves these handles up then she has a little problem with hand placement when she is trying to cleanse herself. But having the arms down frees up her moving space while sitting on the seat. This chair is very heave and not easy to lift unless it’s by someone with a sturdy build. But having said all of this I would definitely buy this chair again. It is very useful by having the ability to lower the handles. Yes it’s been a good buy even tho I’ve complained about a few things.

Great quality and easy to assemble for use over home toilet. And truthfully, I'm the least handy handywoman you'll ever find. This chair is exactly like the one being used in rooms in the acute Rehab Centre (for stroke and other illnesses leading to serious physical or cognitive issues) at Providence Little Company of Mary, San Pedro, CA. The occupational therapists there recommended this model. And if you look at their ratings, the center at San Pedro was voted in 2015 in the Top 1% in the country for rehabilitation and physical & occupational therapies, so these people know what they're doing! (The commode & frame our very good insurance covered? Horrible, hard plastic medieval torture device that I found uncomfortable after 30 seconds, and I'm in perfect health, plus it had no back rest.) I also think it's good that the chair my husband was helped to use in the hospital (learning to transfer from walker to chair) is the same at home--complete continuity. My one wish is a design one--unless you have the tools to take off your home toilet seat & lid, you can't use the back rest because it won't fit properly--even with back rest on closest setting, the padded seat is still too far forward. (I realized that home toilets have large tanks right behind the seat, unlike the hospital commodes with more clearance & pipes instead of individual tanks.) But of course if someone is using this chair bedside, then the back rest is perfect for those needing more support, and you still want this commode over the contraption insurance is liable to cover. Last note, though this chair is NOT waterproof, the therapists told me it could be used as a shower chair. The padding will get squelchy over time, but if your disability is more short- than long term (like recovery from a stroke) having a second more comfortable shower chair will be good. I ordered a non-padded tub bench for initial use but once he's strong enough to switch to his own tile shower, he plans on using this chair for rest breaks (until he can stand the entire time). I almost ordered a "dual padded commode/ shower chair" that was $200, but the therapist told me that the Medline chair could be used instead. Since he'll need this for the shower for a limited time, I'm not worried about the seat getting ruined, since it's not like we'll sell this when it's no longer needed. But using it as a shower chair is definitely "off label" use. JDC has been the BEST seller to work with, too.

I bought this for my mother who’s had severe mobility issues and several subsequent falls after initially falling and fracturing her patella in May 2018. She is rather stubborn and extremely opinionated and initially had put the kibosh on any “old lady” equipment. However, from the start getting up and down on and off the toilet has been very difficult for her both because of the injury itself and because of her overall weakness from doing little besides sitting in one place for over a year. Finally, after she missed the toilet sitting down and ended up in the no man’s land between the wall and the toilet, unable to free herself on her own, I took matters into my own hands and snuck in a very basic potty chair while she was napping one day. It helped so much and gave her such a welcome sense of security she actually didn’t put up much of a fight at all regarding it. However, she is quite thin, and after a fairly short period of time sitting on it for anything more than a minute or two max became extremely painful due to her bony backside. Also, even as thin as she is, the standard potty chair was so exceptionally narrow it was impossible for her to wipe sitting down. She would have to do it after she stood, before pulling up her pants and she felt very unstable doing so and was sacred she was going to fall again doing so by herself. (And I myself am not very skinny and having to use the bathroom on the standard potty chair was a special kind of hell for me. I can recall no other time being overwhelmed by such an enveloping sense of claustrophobia. It was so awful I quickly came to the point I just couldn’t stand to use it and having to make it out of the way every time was beyond a pain in the butt.) So, with these contributing factors in mind I decided it was necessary to upgrade to a better potty chair. I’m a very conscientious shopper and spent a couple of days on Amazon comparing the stats of various chairs and reading a very comprehensive cross section of their reviews. I wanted to make sure my selection was well designed, well made, sturdy and comfortable. It was important an average size person, such as myself, would have enough room to spread their legs wide enough to facilitate proper hygiene. It also needed to be substantial enough that my mum felt safe putting her weight on it while sitting and standing and that it be cushioned and have proper back support so she could be seated comfortably long enough to do what she needed to do and even be able to continue to sit there while washing her hands and brushing her teeth AM & PM. After exhaustive comparison this model seemed to check off all my boxes and even give me a useful feature or two I hadn’t thought of, like drop down arms on each side, so I ordered it. I was so sure about it I was willing to wait for it to be delivered as it was not Prime eligible, even though I really needed it ASAP. So I was disappointed when, just before the original delivery window was up I checked it one morning to discover another week had been tacked on. So, I was surprised when, the day before it was due to finally arrive I got a notification saying it had been delivered. I was even more surprised when I arrived home to find it wasn’t there. And, unfortunately by the time I did get home Amazon Customer Svc had already closed so I had to settle for an email to them. When I checked back in the morning it said the delivery had been delayed but would be to me by 8pm. I waited anxiously all day and finally just before 8pm, in the middle of a three day long rain storm, I opened the door to find the chair had arrived. Yes! Finally! It had arrived...in a box ripped open on two sides and missing another entirely. I was so aggravated I thought I was going to cry for a minute thinking I was going to have to send it back because there was no way it had made it to me unscathed in what essentially was half a box. But, after careful inspection the chair seemed to have arrived in its entirety completely undamaged. Not only that it was every bit as great as I was expecting and then some. It was so comfortable my mum was left totally without ammunition to voice even one complaint. And from the minute my mum began to use it it was smooth sailing. No problems. It is extremely comfortable and was holding up great. My mum was extremely happy with it and even I have found it to be both comfortable and practical. Overall, I was extremely satisfied with my purchase. And even though it was a bit pricey, being at the top end of the price range for potty chairs, I felt it was money well spent having gotten an item that was top quality and totally met my needs. That was until last night. I had just gotten my mum in bed for the night when I. went to the bathroom for the last time before I got in bed myself. As I sat down on the chair I heard a loud metallic “tink” as an unknown object hit the floor. I finished going to the bathroom then began looking on the floor for the object I’d heard drop. I quickly found a fairly large metal pin stuck inside a spring. It only took a second of going over the chair to realize the piece I’d just picked up under the toilet was in fact the button that depresses so the arm can be lowered. I was hopeful it was something I could easily fix. But, upon closer inspection there appears to be absolutely no way to screw it back in at all. And now one arm of the potty Chu

I bought this to replace the other traditional commode chair you see on Amazon. It's the grey/silver one. This one is more minimal, which I thought would be better, but it's better and worse in some ways. First, the thing was practically assembled in the box already. All you have to do is install the back rest and the bucket. It's pretty impressive, but it makes the box very large. The chair is VERY narrow, I'm paraplegic and I'm 6'2 about 230ish+, and the arms on either side are very close to my thighs on both sides. I thought it would be a problem, but I've gotten a little used to it. Also, the back rest is moved a bit far forward, so you can't really lean backwards to rest your muscles against a wall or something without it bending your back in a weird way. It would have been better if the backrest could go further back, but it's a little too much like a stiff upright sitting chair. Often times, I have to...manually stimulate to get my bowels moving, and it's really hard to do that in this chair. Trying to reach under with my hand is very difficult, and I can't always fully reach down there without dropping the side arm, holding on to other arm, and slumping over as far as I can to reach under. It's awkward and pretty uncomfortable, but it's not worrying me about falling out of the chair as much as I thought it did at first. The arms are pretty strong for what they are. I thought at first using them, that I wouldn't be able to press down on them hard enough to be able to transfer as much as I could with the old chair. This locking mechanism used on the arms is probably stronger than the ones on the other commode chair though. I'm not as worried about the arm snapping and dropping down which would be a disaster if it happened while transferring. The set is ok, it's padded and seems like it would be supported if the wood or mdf that sits under the padding on the seat broke. Hard to tell, butt (heh) seems like it's OK. Adjusts to a good height that's level with my chair for transferring. Only needed to go up one click on the legs. I'm on 26inch tires. Itbwas about $20 cheaper than the other chair, which is good if you're trying to save money. So far, the chair feels and seems more sturdy and safer than the other chair, but the narrow arms, stiff back, and extreme difficulty reaching under are some pretty huge negatives too. I'm not sure if I'm going to keep this and use it as a commode chair, or go back to the old commode and use this as a shower chair.

This is the only commode I haven't had to add padding to. It's easy to assemble. The only downside is how difficult it is to drag it across the floor. Would love to have optional wheels/breaks so grandpa can zoom around his room.

Good quality, it works great. My mother is happy with it.

Very comfortable seat.

Comfortable to sit on and very stable. I wish the pail had a spout to it. It’s kind of a cheaper plastic and I’m not too happy with it, but the commode is high-quality.

Absolutely perfect!!!!!