David Gillon

There's a kerb-cut on my way from the high street to where I normally park that's a nightmare*. It's set diagonally on the corner going across a slope, and rather than the standard two side-slopes fairing into a central flat one, there's just the two side slopes meeting in the middle. The best way to handle it is to wheel onto the right-hand slope, which is closest to the line of the slope, and just barely safe - you can feel the chair wanting to tip backwards, then turn to go up the left-hand slope at 90 degrees, which puts you closest to going cross slope. Or if you can get a good line, just cut across the right slope at a continuous angle and up onto the left.

So I got there today and there was a guy standing on the left hand slope, I think trying to decide which way to go. As soon as he spotted me he said "Oh, sorry," and stepped out of the way. But that did mean I'd stopped and had to wheel onto the right hand slope then turn. Just as I'm about to turn, a woman with a buggy wheels blithely down the right hand side. Seriously? I mean, she may not have known I was about to turn, but kerb-cuts are barely wide enough for a chair to start with, is waiting 10s really so unreasonable?

*I'd call it the worst I've ever seen, except there's one a hundred yards away that's so bad I don't even dare try it, despite it being on the flat - it's humped _UP_ in the middle.

At Homebase, rolling slowly up the aisle, trying to find the nails I want, young couple on the other side with a 3-4yo. Suddenly "Louis, no!"

I turned round in the chair, rather than with the chair, which was just as well. At first I thought he'd grabbed the spreader bar across the back of the chair, and he probably did have one hand on it. But the other was wrapped around tyre and pushrim. If I'd spun in place there would have been tears (and probably blood).

Normally I'm quite relaxed about kids being curious about the chair, better to get them thinking of it as normal when they're young, but this was dangerous, so I let his mortified mum force him to say sorry. (She did a good job, telling him "those are his legs" and so on).

Bloody pedestrians....
Pedestrian 1, elderly gentleman with a stick, managing to entirely block a pavement wide enough for three abreast.
Me, approaching from behind: Excuse me.
P1: Oh, I didn't hear you.
P1: You should have a horn. (Not 'Ha, ha, you should have a horn', more 'Why are you allowed out without a horn?')
So my polite request to be past was somehow turned into me being at fault.

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.
 

Another sunny day. In fact I'm probably sunburnt as I didn't think to take a hat or put on suntan stuff.

Some trouble getting a taxi, I just couldn't get through to the big local firm, so in the end I rolled down to the station, just in time to see the last taxi pulling out of the rank. Fortunately I only had to wait about 10 minutes, even with about eight people in front of me. That meant that by the time I'd gotten into the Castle Gardens at 12:30ish I'd missed the first half of my favourite band of festival regulars, Hot Rats, but at least I caught half their set. The incomporable Ian Cutler on violin, with Doug Hudson on guitar and vocals, they've a new bass player this year, Scott Kirk, who actually does facial expressions (the old one wasn't at all bad, but he just stood stock still, expressionless, and played).

My friends had already arrived and found a table on the grass almost dead centre in front of the stage, and fortunately one is notably tall, so I found them straight away. Good to catch up with everyone, particularly the friend who is about 5 weeks post bone marrow transplant and is looking okay, even if not at his best.

Following on from Hot Rats we had Sur Les Docks, a French band from Dunkirk with a pirate motif picked up from the Dunkirkers. Mandolin, whistle, violin, accordion, guitar, bass,  drums. They're often over for the Festival, but this is the first time I've caught them, really good. They describe themselves as 'Maritime Raw Folk Punk', which is just about right, imagine the Pogues doing sea shanties in French.The whistle player retired to the back of the stage for a smoke during other people's solos, which struck me as very French. Their lead singer/mandolin  player was very hoarse, apparently they had a really good time last night at the Gordon, where I'd been earlier in the day - it gave his voice a little bit of a Piaf Je Ne Regrette Rien edge. I bought their current CD (I actually was waving the seller over because she's normally the one selling Hot Rats CDs, but I was happy to buy Sur Les Dock by that point).

Nous Sommes Sur Les Docks

I didn't catch the name of the fourth act, but the description was Anglo-Swedish, folk rock, with a Swedish woman on lead vocals and guitar, a backing vocalist/guitarist who played sitting down while she bounced about the stage, and a dreadlocked bass player who never strayed from the back of the stage. I'd quite happily have stayed and listened to more of their set, but it was down to me at that point and I needed the loo, so I rolled down to the High Street to grab something to eat - chicken noodles from the Singapora, then grabbed a taxi and was home by about half past five.

Sweeps continues tomorrow with the big procession, I normally head over to catch Hot Rats playing the Gordon, but the festival pretty much wraps up after the procession at 3PM and Bank Holiday taxi fares are extortionate, so I'l probably pass.

Just back from the first day of Rochester's Sweep's Festival, and first time I've done it in a chair (I opted out last year as I was three days post surgery). The crowds were surprisingly good about getting out of the way of the chair - once they'd noticed me! Of course it was Rochester, so cobbles everywhere, and my back is letting me know it isn't happy with me.

Slight shortage of the usual suspects, bumped into my friend Ray in the beer tent at the Gordon Hotel, but that was it for today, when we've had as many as a dozen in the group in the past, though we had a pleasant chat with a couple of the bell ringing crowd he knew. Should be more people out tomorrow hopefully. Caught the end of Green Diesel's set in the Gordon as I arrived, female fiddler/vocalist backed by four guys on guitar, ukelele etc, then went up to the Castle Gardens to see most of their second set. 'Most' as by the time we'd queued for the cash machine (all three machines at Asda had been flat out of cash when I tried earlier), then I'd pushed most of the way around the castle to get to the accessible gate, they'd already started. Worth a listen.

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.