David Gillon

c950m back with a 22m rise, 2m of which happens in about 10m on a corner. I'd have to choose a different route if I couldn't get out and push those 10m. I in 5 is not practical. But apart from that I pushed it non stop, if very slowly in places. I did have the traditional little old lady asking if I would like a push, but she did it aboot 10 feet from the crest of a slope, and there's a straight 150m with a slight descent immediately after, so of course I whipped by her as soon as I crested it.

So total distance about a nautical mile, which I think is the furthest I've pushed apart from the couple of days in Athens (and that was all downhill).

What taking the two slightly different routes confirmed is that I have substantially more difficulty on cambered pavements, and that my left arm is only capable of getting me up a kerb with difficulty. Because of a car being awkward, I ended up doing one slope on the opposite side to usual, The side I usually do it on has flat paving, the opposite side has the same slope, but is steeply cambered, it was far more difficult than it normally is (this is where I had the little old lady intervention). It's not simply a matter of me, though, the new chair isn't great at holding a line on a cambered pavement, it has a strong tendency to turn into the slope. The clown chair was  just as bad, the GPV, with cambered wheels, made it not an issue.The particular problem I have with this is it means I need to brake with the uphill arm while pushing with the downhill, and if my dud left arm is the downhill one, this is massively less than ideal.

I rang Wheelchair Services on Friday to say I definitely need a 3" cushion as discussed (and noted) at the handover, the seat to footplate gap is too short otherwise and my legs aren't flat on the cushion. I strongly suspect they measured me while I was sitting on a 3" cushion. I'm currently using the 2" they gave me, with a 1" I had in the house under it, which makes the difference between being in intolerable pain within an hour or so, and being able to sit for at least three hours.. Apparently fixing this will need one of the therapists to ring me back and discuss it. I'll raise the camber issue at the same time. I've checked the manual and the XLT can have cambered wheels, but you need an extra part in the wheel mounting to accomplish it, rather than just adding a couple of extra washers as on the GPV, so that'll probably need to be ordered in if I can get them to agree to it.
 

I was actually planning to ring Wheelchair Services today and chase them up about my new chair, their 65 days to deliver being about up, but they just rang me to say I've an appointment next Thursday to pick it up.

Finally!

2nd wheelchair appointment, not quite as good as the first one, but okay.

Not helped by them running an hour and a quarter late, and me being half an hour early. Though fortunately that meant the three hail showers had blown through before I needed to head back to the car (doubly good as I'd left my coat in the car).

It was one Kent and Medway Wheelchair Services wheelchair tech and a local wheelchair dealer in a consultancy role (apparently they'd got him in to advise on one particular patient and were running as many past him as they could while they had him).

The negative was that they took the Quickie Argon off the menu right at the start, no explanation beyond 'unfortunately we won't be able to supply that one'*. OTOH they did offer either a Quickie Life or an Invacare XLT, both of which I was able to take a look at. The difference is the Argon was an L-shaped frame, the Life and the XLT are box frames, the Argon might have sat on the passenger seat in the car, the Life and XLT will have to go in the boot, almost certainly with at least one rear seat folded, but seeing as I never use the rear seats and can waddle between boot and driver's door that isn't an issue.

I was amused they apologised for having the XLT set up as 'a bit of a grannie's chair' (height adjustable push handles and armrests), it looked much better with them off. They were completely on board with my preference for a rigid chair, which took the folding version of the Life off the table, and in the end they left the decision to me, which basically came down to weight. The XLT was just slightly lighter with wheels on, and much more noticeably so with wheels off - advantage of a titanium frame. I was tending towards the XLT anyway, but asked their opinions and both said XLT.

I suspect I'm not going to get as good a cushion as I hoped, because I'm not a full time user and not high risk, but the tech did say I should come back to them if I was having issues and I'm willing to buy a good one if needs be. Interestingly the tech confimed my pelvis is twisted - he asked about spinal issues such as scoliosis and I pointed out the right knee forward of the left thing, which he'd already spotted. He got down on his knees and had a feel and confirmed it's twisted both rotationally and in elevation when I'm sitting, though I'm not certain which side is high - if it's right then I've got even more of a leg length discrepancy than I thought as subjectively it's my left leg that's slightly short.

I was chatting with the dealer while the tech went off to get the order forms, and he pointed out that even though the XLT was lighter, the castors on it were much heavier than those on the Life (6"x2" vs 6"x1" - very apparent when you tipped the chairs up and felt the momentum when you let the castors swing around into your hand), plus the narrower ones will have a lower rolling resistance, so we opted for those when speccing it. He also noted the Life is more expensive, but he always offers the XLT first to his customers.

They were a bit surprised I'm only a 16" seat width when they measured me up, apparently I look chunkier than that. There wasn't a great deal of customization to be done, but they were willing to work with me on that, skirt guards vs arm rests, narrower castors, and my choice of colours - I went for the sandblasted titanium, up to two weeks longer for delivery, but it's not going to chip, and pneumatic tyres vs solids. The only thing the tech balked on was folding push handles (which the dealer pushed for), apparently they're a repair problem, so I had to settle for low-profile instead.

Their standards are it should be available within 65 days at the outside. I'm not sure if the two weeks extra for the frame gets added on, but they seemed to think it should be noticeablely less than that, so hopefully by the start of July at the latest I'll have a decent active user chair.

* I suspect I ran into the difference between an OT concerned about maximising function, and a wheelchair tech concerned about minimising budget, and different interpretations of the fact I'm not a full time user. Seeing as I was surprised to be offered the Argon and I'm ending up with about what I'd hoped for beforehand, but in a titanium frame, I can't complain too much.

Result!

Within the first 10 minutes the Wheelchair Assessment OT was saying "I think I'm going to recommend we provide you a Quickie Argon". I thought I'd have to fight far harder to get a lower spec chair!

She initially said "as a medium priority", but when she saw how I was using the existing monster she changed that to "high priority"

Apparently that should be another two appointments to sort it - I'm assuming one trial with an Argon of roughly the right size to check precise measurements and then a final fitting with the actual chair. Not certain how long that will take, she implied it wasn't likely to be fast, but that was before she switched to high priority.

She's not recommending an aftermarket back at the minute, but I talked her into a higher back than she was initially proposing - above the bottom of the shoulder blades as opposed to below it. Nice attention to detail/local issues as well, when I said I'd be spending most of my time in Rochester she said "Ah, cobbles, need a wider front tyre on the castors to avoid getting bogged down".

*And she said Helium not Argon at one point (c£2.5k vs c£2k), but I think that was just a slip of the tongue.
 

It's been a long afternoon, though. I left for my Wheelchair Assessment at 12:10, I got back home at 5:45 (it's a 10 minute drive). I actually got into the appointment 10 minutes early (apparently there was confusion at their end as to whether the appontment was 11AM or 1PM, but my paperwork clearly said 1PM), but they used up pretty much the whole allocated timeslot as well.

The rest of the afternoon I spent in A&E, seeing as a) I was up at the hospital anyway, and b) my infected toe was a bloody mess this morning. I was actually triaged almost immediately, but then had to wait until almost 5 before being seen. They were excellent once they had their hands on me, but the problem seemed to be they only had one nurse practitioner running the minor injuries section and deciding on the treatment her minions needed to implement and she was run off her feet.