The Wheelchair Man

The first step towards getting your hands on a lovely shiny new power wheelchair from the NHS is to be visited in your home by an Assessor from the Wheelchair Clinic.  My lovely OT referred me, and a letter arrived telling me that I would be visited early in September.  Exciting stuff!  So the appointed time came – which is more than you could say for the Assessor!  We waited an hour after the appointment time before we rang them.  They cheerfully informed us that they’d had to cancel my appointment, and would send me a new one through the post.  The letter arrived a couple of days later, apologising that circumstances outside their control had made it necessary to reschedule, and gave me a new date 3 weeks later.  

On the new appointment day, we didn’t really hold out a lot of hope but, bang on time, the doorbell rang and the adventure began.  Colin ushered the Wheelchair Man into the sitting room.  “Ooh, hello” said the Wheelchair Man, shook my hand unenthusiastically, and put his crocheted shoulder bag down on the floor by his feet.  Our dog loves nothing better than a new bag to investigate, and immediately stuck her nose in it.  The Wheelchair Man glared at her.  Normally I would call her away, but I didn’t.  Instead I admired the bag, and he told us that it had been crocheted for him by a friend.  “She’s very clever” I remarked.  Turned out the friend was a ‘he’, not a ‘she’.  Possibly my faux pas did not endear me to the Wheelchair Man.

So he got his notepad out of his crocheted bag and asked me to describe my day.  I showed him how I can raise and lower my armchair to get out of it, and told him I can walk to the downstairs loo, and to the kitchen to make coffee.  Game over.  They don’t provide wheelchairs for socialising, he told me.  They only supply them if you can’t walk at all around the house.  I pointed out that I have a progressive disease, and that day will come sooner or later.  I pointed out that when that day comes it’s a bit late to start thinking about ordering a wheelchair that could take months to arrive.  He wrote something in his notebook, I don’t know what.  “Stroppy cow”, probably.

He said he had a power chair in the van that I was welcome to try out.  I asked him if it had a seat that would lift me up.  The Wheelchair Man said that the NHS don’t supply chairs with elevating seats.  I told him that I knew several people with my condition who had been provided with NHS wheelchairs, and they had paid themselves for the elevating seat to be added.  He said that he’d worked for the Wheelchair Service for 20 years and has never heard of such a thing.  Anyway, I said there was no point in him bringing the chair in because I wouldn’t be able to get out of it safely.  He suggested that Colin would be able to help me out, and Colin filled him in on the mechanics of getting someone with IBM out of a low chair, making it quite clear that he wasn’t going to risk me falling.  

So the Wheelchair Man said I will have to go the the Wheelchair Clinic for a test drive in case I couldn’t do it and ended up driving under a bus or something.  It crossed my mind that I don’t see an awful lot of buses between my sitting room and my kitchen, but that didn’t seem like a conversation I needed to get into so I left it.  So I asked the Wheelchair Man, because I was genuinely interested, how I was going to get to Wheelchair Clinic.  He said he would send a manual wheelchair and I said I’d already got one but I can’t get out of it any more.  He asked me if it had been crash-tested, and I confessed that I had no idea.  Colin took the Wheelchair Man out to the car to show him our wheelchair, which is in the boot of the car along with the electric riser seat that until fairly recently lifted me out of the wheelchair quite successfully.  Out of the front room window, I could see the Wheelchair Man flapping his arms in horror.  Apparently my wheelchair hasn’t been crash tested and I mustn’t use it, and I mustn’t put the riser cushion on it either.  Ever.

So he outlined his plan for getting me to the Wheelchair Clinic, which involved sending patient transport, a Proper (crash tested) Wheelchair and portable ramps to fetch me. “Great” I said.  “How am I going to get out of the wheelchair when I get there?”  Apparently they can park me next to a bench that will raise me up, all I will need to do is shuffle myself sideways off the wheelchair onto the bench.  I know I can’t do that, but I suppose they can slide me over if need be so in theory that’s do-able.  They don’t have any test chairs with rising seats of course, but I guess we can repeat the slide process back into my Proper Wheelchair.  Patient transport can bring me home and wheel me up a ramp into the house.  “How am I going to get out of the wheelchair when I get home?” I asked.  The Wheelchair Man had no answer.

While he was here, I thought I would ask him if he knew anything about Vela Tango chairs, which are basically office chairs with a powered lift function.  The Wheelchair Man flapped his arms.  “No,no,no” he cried.  “People have been MAIMED using those”  He suggested that if I have that amount of money to throw away I should give it to the dogs’ home.

After a few more pleasantries the Wheelchair Man gathered up his crocheted bag and got up to leave.  Our dog hopped up onto my lap to say goodbye, as she always does when visitors leave.  The Wheelchair Man glared at her.  He shook my hand unenthusiastically, and our dog took the opportunity to lick the back of his hand.  The look of utter disgust on the Wheelchair Man’s face made the whole morning worthwhile.

A week or so later the entirely useless manual wheelchair arrived.  I haven’t heard anything about the power chair but I assume from what the Wheelchair Man said that I don’t qualify for one.  Hey ho.