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For those interested.
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for sites covering:- |
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The Royal Air Force - Gliding - Disability - Greyhounds - Online quizzes - Web site design... |
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Carers lot |
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Written in 1996 for a local disabled persons magazine. Five years ago a car hit my wife whilst she was on a pedestrian crossing. It hit her hard enough to shatter both knee joints and injure her back and head. It was sheer bad luck that brought her and the car together on the crossing at the same moment in time. If only she had been a couple of seconds more or less in the fish and chip shop they would never have met. Such is the nature of accidents. The road to non-recovery. Even after weeks in hospital, several operations and months of physiotherapy walking was all but impossible due to movement limitation and pain. We didn't realize at the time that a wheelchair would become a permanent feature but this has proved to be the case. My wife's busy working life, which included support for my business, had come to an end. Coping with circumstances led to much depression, which, to this day, still comes to the surface sometimes. On discharge from hospital both legs were still plastered to the top, which meant that a wheelchair with elevating leg rests was needed. Neither the National Health Service or the Red Cross had anything like that so we hired one from a local wheelchair shop at £15-00 per week. We felt this approach bettered a previous suggestion of using a standard wheelchair with a plank of wood for leg supports. It was quite a sum of money but at least the woman who ran the shop at the time was a bit of a looker and nice to talk to. This made parting with the cash once a fortnight a little easier than it might have been. Getting used to things. The first trips to town were 'interesting'. Walking around inside the shops was difficult because I kept forgetting that my wife's feet were at least three feet in front of her body (it's different having a wife with three feet). I wheeled her protruding legs into many peoples bottoms. Women thought they were being assaulted and men that their luck had changed. I knocked dresses on the floor, scratched furniture and almost put other people in wheelchairs. I'm just not going to talk about getting in and out of lifts. We were always glad to get home in those days. An expensive business. After weeks of hiring the chair even the nice saleswoman's charms wore a bit thin and we bought a chair identical to the one we were using. It cost £430-00 but at least it was a one-off payment. We thought so at the time anyway. I've always been, to put it a nice way, of slim build and that wheelchair weighed a ton. I'd made a good recovery from having a kidney removed eleven years back but the fact that they'd had to cut though a large chunk of stomach muscle still gives pain when lifting things sometimes. Nonetheless, after a while I could look in the mirror and notice muscles building that I never realised were there to be built and became quite fit, especially since I had given up the smokes years earlier. A degree of luxury arrived one day when the damaged legs could bend at the knees enough to lower the leg rests down a few notches. It was a mixed blessing however because now we could get into many more shops (shopping makes me yawn). Also it became clear that we'd have to go and see the lady in the wheelchair shop again and fork out more money for a more suitable lightweight wheelchair. Efforts to offset the cost by selling the old one amounted to zilch and it lays in our loft to this day. It had to go up there in component parts because I couldn't get it through the loft hatch hole, whole. (Eh?.. A loft hatch with two holes?). Pushing techniques. I reckon to be an experienced 'pusher' when we go out now although I must admit that in those early days I felt a bit of a lemon pushing a wheelchair. No more cool dude image for me. I got good at walking by the side of the chair using only one hand to push and steer. That's as cool an image as I'm able to cut these days. The advantage of pushing like this, where possible, is that it makes it very much easier to talk to each other face to face. The 'face to top of head' type conversations you have when pushing from behind aren't easy to hear against any background noise. A certain amount of finesse in the pushing technique is necessary. The legs, even after all this time, cannot be touched or jarred. I have to read the terrain just a few yards ahead, as well as look where we're going generally. Slight, almost imperceptible, downward pressure on the handles at the right moment over minor bumps or troughs make a big difference to comfort. Go electric! I didn't want to get an electric scooter but my wife put her hand down about it (because she couldn't use her foot) and got one anyway. Up until that time I'd always hoped that walking again was a possibility. To lay out a large amount of money for a scooter seemed a huge admission of defeat and the closing of a door on our former lives. However, when it arrived it made a big improvement. More independence from me was gained and I didn't know what to do with my hands. I'd got so used to pushing a wheelchair by now that I felt a bit lost walking along without one. I thought of buying a wheelbarrow for something to push whilst on those town trips but then I thought it would only get filled up with shopping if I did. I settled for putting my hands in my pockets instead. Don't mess with me! I can't help feeling like a minder when I'm out accompanying the GT scooter. I hate rudeness and can get quite stroppy if anyone behaves in an inconsiderate manner. I've been doing a lot of cycling lately as well as wheelchair pushing which has added further to the physical fitness. This means that if my belligerent manner upsets anyone bigger than me I could probably run away quite fast leaving my wife to say: "You wouldn't hit a woman on a scooter would you?" or I suppose I could push her off the scooter and, changing the gender, say the same thing. That's teamwork. A continuing saga. The mobility story doesn't end there. There's a lavender coloured wheelchair to buy yet. Fortunately financial help was at hand this time. That was just as well because the chair cost a bundle. It is infinitely adjustable (so it should be for that money). I can't resist a thing like that with my engineering background so I set about infinitely adjusting it. I couldn't get both sides looking entirely symmetrical, it creaks a bit sometimes and the footrests wobble a little. Got to pay more than we did to overcome that I suppose. However, it is more comfortable and I think it's easier to push. Especially in that blasé walking at the side method. Be pleasantly assertive. As any 'pusher-pushee' team knows it's easy to get pushed to the back or not let in to see things in crowded places such as car boot sales or, to be more up market, antique and craft fairs. Don't let it happen I say. You can't be too reserved with a wheelchair or you'd never go anywhere. Touch people very gently with the 'pushees' toes or part of the chair then apologize sincerely when they look round. It's a different version of saying excuse me. The verbal request often goes unheard in a crowd. The recipient will usually apologise sincerely themselves and then make a little room. We English are very good at apologising profusely to each other for minor physical contact. Be careful not to make them jump though or you may end up with the person concerned sitting in the chair as well. There are those that glare if I stand my ground but I don't care. It's necessary to be firm once in a while to avoid being sidelined. Standing out in a crowd. Being stared at is another problem people in wheelchairs and their pushers have to suffer and come to terms with especially if they look at all youthful. It is perhaps a more acceptable to see people in wheelchairs due obviously to age. If this doesn't look to be the case, it seems to raise the curiosity level. This is only natural but it's not pleasant to be the subject of it. If the staring is excessive then the only answer is to stare back until the person looks away. However, I don't carry this psychology to young children. They're curious about everything and that's only part of growing up. A change of life. In 1995, four years after the accident, the complications of the situation lead to the downfall of my one man business. Now the government pays me to be a full time carer. An annoying part of this is that people keep asking me how I am enjoying retirement. The term 'retirement' is the wrong one to use. The price paid for this apparent retirement is two shattered lives. This has made a change of occupation necessary that can be truly defined as 'Carer'. Anyone who has actually done the job for a number of years will confirm that it is nothing like being retired. End of the article but since then..... Things progress: The lavender coloured wheelchair has recently been motorised. The standard wheels have been replaced with ones that have motors in the hubs. The battery to power them is slung underneath the seat. A joystick control is mounted on the frame. It is an expensive adaptation but some of the advantages of the original chair are preserved. These are that, once the battery has been removed, the chair can still be folded for storage in the car etc. The wheels can be removed and put back in the usual way. There aren't any wires to deal with, the motors connect when a plug on the wheel engages with a socket on the frame. When necessary, the hub motor drives can be easily disengaged and the wheelchair pushed manually. This means that a pusher can help with steps, kerbs and other obstacles. A flick of the wrist engages the motors again. The converted chair has a range of 12 miles and can travel at 4 m.p.h. Redundant?...Not a chance! Although this might appear to make the good old faithful pusher (me) redundant there is still a role to play. The lightweight chair now weighs approximately 27Kg (abound 2 Stone) more than it did, so a little muscle involved in getting it in and out of the car and setting it up. There is still the usual help needed with steps, bumps and wheelchair course clearing (the chair is 3 inches wider now) so I guess she still can't get rid of me....yet! |
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