Test Drive - Whoops

2015-03-27T15:51:38Z

Physio appointment today, which means accessing their building via the automatic door in the basement, the outward opening one at the top of a ramp. This is great when the automatic opening is working, when the automatic opening isn't working, not so great. I did manage it though.

(Physio continues to be 'well, frozen shoulders are difficult', we spent most of it with my arm parked up against it's current hard limits trying to figure out a) where they are right now, b) what we can do about them, this isn't comfortable (literal tears in eyes stufff) and he brought up cortisone injections, which I guess is physio code for 'I'm not sure this is working', so keep up with the exercises, see him again on the 17th, and we''ll decide then what to say to my consultant when I see him on the 23rd.)

So, anyway, it was reasonably sunny when I got home and I thought I'd try some wheelies on the kerb at the edge of the drive. I can't reliably do it every time, or even most of the time, but I can eventually wheelie the front castors onto the full height kerb. The problem is I'm not physically strong enough to do anything about it once I'm there - though I have successfully pushed up less than full height kerbs - it must be the angle.

So having got the castors onto the kerb I then have to back off again, and I'm not certain what happened the last time, but it involved my legs flailing overhead and me being ejected ass-over-teakettle out the back of the chair. I'm okay, the only thing bruised is my dignity (it turns out my dignity is just to the left of my sacro-iliac joint), and the chair is okay but for a few scratches. Having got that far over the simplest way out was to complete the backward roll to end up sitting legs-crossed on the drive, muttering to myself.

And the irony is that two of my neighbours were having a conversation 20m away and neither of them noticed. Next door neighbour actually said 'Hi, David' after I stood up, but I'm not sure he noticed the wheelchair even though he was looking directly at it!

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2015-02-26T20:13:53Z

Today's event, first medical appointment in the chair. Which went okay-ish, though I can't help thinking that if you have to put a sign on the front of your building saying 'Physio patients, not this one, you want the one at the other side of the business park' then you probably want better directions in your letters.

Anyway, I found the right building in the end. complete with wheelchair access through the bowels of the underground car park. Fortunately relatively well thought out - 'Oh shit, outward opening door at the top of a ramp' turned out to have automatic opening (though of course you lose all your momentum waiting for it to open). OTOH the lift was only just big enough for my chair, I can see larger powerchairs having issues.

The physio wasn't thrown that I was using a chair, which was just the reaction I wanted. I did try trolling the situation wrt wheelchair assessments and the weight etc of the chair during the explanation of what was going on in the hope that he would take the bait and say 'that chair's clearly inappropriate'; but unfortunately what he actually said was 'I don't know a lot about wheelchairs' and 'we leave that to Wheelchair Services' :(

Treatment-wise he agrees that I have impingement syndrome. Unfortunately he says I've also got a frozen shoulder as a result, and he can't treat the impingement syndrome until he's treated the frozen shoulder. *headdesk* So I've got a bunch of exercises for working on range of motion to be getting on with and another appointment next Friday.

There did seem to be a disturbing undertone of 'I'm only here to treat one thing, so if I treat the frozen shoulder I won't have to treat the impingement syndrome'. That might be a somewhat harsh interpretation, but I'm really not sure it's wrong. If it turns out to be the case, then I think it's fair to say someone is going to be complained at!

I went shopping at Asda* post-physio (and really overdid amount of food you can squeeze into one basket sitting on your knee). Treatment at the checkouts was, ahem, interesting.

I got to the tills to find the wide aisle was closed (which makes two-for-two for trips to Asda in the chair), even though about a dozen other aisles were open. Picked another aisle and the lady running the till calls up from the customer she's serving that 'she's open'.
I'm sorry, what? Finally figured out that she meant someone had just opened up the next aisle (not the wide one), which I couldn't see from that height.

So I swap aisles, only to find the chair physically won't fit through that aisle (it did fit through one last time, but this one was clearly subtly narrower). At which point the till-ladies decide among themselves that they're summoning a supervisor to sort it out and I should go down to the wide aisle. Why the aisle-opening one couldn't simply open the wide aisle herself I don't know. Eventually the supervisor appears, who looks about 20. But he's male, so he's a supervisor.

Up until that point I'd been reasonably happy that people were trying to help even if they weren't being particularly competent at it. And that's when he really put his foot in his mouth. "Sorry for the delay," he says, "we haven't got the personnel to man this one.'

'But you've got the staff to man a dozen other aisles?'

'Er'.

Let's just say I firmly impressed on him the need for manning the access aisle first, last and always! Maybe he'll think before making stupid comments again!

* my nearest superstore, Wallmart owned, for American readers

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David Gillon

Test Drive - Whoops

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