Chair saga, part whateverthefuck
Jan. 16th, 2016 09:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysobelI'm not sure how much I've talked about this here. But in the interests of having it all in one place:
Okay, so. My current wheelchair is dying bit by bit.
To be fair, it's seven or eight years old by this point, and that's a long time for wheelchairs, especially fancypanfs ones that I have. Insurances usually pay for a new chair after five years. I delayed getting a new chair because my current wheelchair has the ability to tilt side to side -- not all the way, I think maybe 30° off vertical, but it's very useful for me for shifting position and also reaching things. But apparently this wasn't useful to the wheelchair companies, because they stopped making lateral tilt, and in fact the one I got was one of the last ones available. And it's really really useful.
But chairs don't last forever, and I finally gave in and started the process for getting a new chair. The technician I'm working with for this, whom I've worked with for a very long time and is good at what he does, found a way to get me lateral tilt; it's a different brand of chair, and in fact uses one company for the seating mechanism and a different one for the wheels/motor/brains base.
This process was started in July. I do not yet have a new chair.. Some of this is insurance stupidities; a lot of it is sheer incompetence on the part of the wheelchair company that deals with paperwork and stuff. The technician I work with is amazing, but the company he works for sucks like an overachieving black hole, only there's no competition so I don't have any option.
Meanwhile, the chair is in slow decay. The last few months it's been on the fritz: it sometimes doesn't lock the wheels when I release the joystick, it sometimes doesn't want to switch modes, and worst of all, the lateral tilt keeps arbitrarily stopping working and then arbitrarily starting working. To add to the inconvenience, the chair has a "safety feature" that if it's even the slightest bit off center, it won't go faster than ... I can't figure out if it's quarter speed or less than that. It's fucking slow. Easily distracted snail pace.
A couple weeks ago two things happened in short order. One, the tilt stopped working while I was using it to adjust position, so the entire chair is stuck at a distinct left tilt. And two, the batteries stopped charging more than about 30%, for a few days, and then stopped charging at all. It stopped even being able to recognize that it was plugged in -- there is a safety feature that keeps the chair from driving when the charger is connected, and that stopped happening.
Having maximum charge of 30%-ish kept me to the house out of fear the chair would totally die, but the tilt and the complete lack of charging meant I had to switch to my backup chair for about a week. Said chair functions, but half the functions don't work (or I can't reach the controls) and it won't tilt even *back* any more, so it is wildly uncomfortable and also keeps me in the house out of fear I will smash my foot (which, without tilting, is very low to the ground) on uneven pavement.
The charging issue got sort of resolved Friday, in that a guy from the wheelchair place came out with diagnostic tools and said that the side charging port was indeed fried, but there was a charging port through the joystick. The tilt issue did not get resolved, since that would takeactual effort more testing than he could do in the field and probably would require replacement parts that don't exist (seeing as how they don't do the lateral tilt any more) and neither the wheelchair place nor the insurance wants to put a lot of labor and money into something that will theoretically be replaced with a new chair Any Day Now No Really.
So I switched back to my regular chair, but it turns out it's just as uncomfortable as the backup chair. (And while it is safe for me to go out in, it is stuck in narcoleptic snail speed, which is frustrating.)
I can't sit in the chair as is, because gravity makes me slide down so the arm rest digs into my hip very painfully, and without the ability to tilt the chair I can't recenter myself or shift back up. I've been trying various methods of jacking up the left side of my body, but none of them have worked particularly well so far. Rolled up towels, for the record, are ... not squishy.
Today was an epitome of miserable. I stayed in bed as long as possible but had a meeting from 2-4 that I had to be at. Towel under my left leg and flattish pillow for extra padding under my butt meant I was listing left but not falling over, and theoretically was supposed to get me through the meeting more or less unscathed.
By half an hour in, I was uncomfortable. By an hour in, that upgraded to pain. Full body pain, but centered in my tailbone (poor battered tailbone that had been completely under assault this last week) and left thigh. By the time I got out of the meeting I was up to an 8 on the pain scale, peaking to 10 if I tried to tilt back (since the process of tilting put more pressure on my tailbone area). There was no comfortable position to sit in. I had full body tension to go with the pain, and ... well, let me share what I posted elsesite, late this afternoon:
I am in bed now, infinitely more comfortable -- pain is down to about a 6 and mostly just my back and tailbone -- and much much calmer. I also think my body is actually relaxing for the first time all day. (The ability to tilt back all the way has proven less than useful -- while being flat on my back would have been nice, the transition to get there only put more pressure on my tailbone area, to the point where I was sobbing in agony before I could even get partway back, so I was never able to go all the way back while in the chair.)
My dad brought over a memory foam wedge to try tomorrow that will hopefully help. I'm not sure whether it would be better to have the memory foam on top of the seat cushion, or between the seat cushion and the frame below it. If the memory foam doesn't work, I will most likely end up back in the backup chair until the lateral tilt on the current chair starts behaving.
Needless to say, this all is ... frustrating is an understatement. And sort of interferes with doing anything at all.
Okay, so. My current wheelchair is dying bit by bit.
To be fair, it's seven or eight years old by this point, and that's a long time for wheelchairs, especially fancypanfs ones that I have. Insurances usually pay for a new chair after five years. I delayed getting a new chair because my current wheelchair has the ability to tilt side to side -- not all the way, I think maybe 30° off vertical, but it's very useful for me for shifting position and also reaching things. But apparently this wasn't useful to the wheelchair companies, because they stopped making lateral tilt, and in fact the one I got was one of the last ones available. And it's really really useful.
But chairs don't last forever, and I finally gave in and started the process for getting a new chair. The technician I'm working with for this, whom I've worked with for a very long time and is good at what he does, found a way to get me lateral tilt; it's a different brand of chair, and in fact uses one company for the seating mechanism and a different one for the wheels/motor/brains base.
This process was started in July. I do not yet have a new chair.. Some of this is insurance stupidities; a lot of it is sheer incompetence on the part of the wheelchair company that deals with paperwork and stuff. The technician I work with is amazing, but the company he works for sucks like an overachieving black hole, only there's no competition so I don't have any option.
Meanwhile, the chair is in slow decay. The last few months it's been on the fritz: it sometimes doesn't lock the wheels when I release the joystick, it sometimes doesn't want to switch modes, and worst of all, the lateral tilt keeps arbitrarily stopping working and then arbitrarily starting working. To add to the inconvenience, the chair has a "safety feature" that if it's even the slightest bit off center, it won't go faster than ... I can't figure out if it's quarter speed or less than that. It's fucking slow. Easily distracted snail pace.
A couple weeks ago two things happened in short order. One, the tilt stopped working while I was using it to adjust position, so the entire chair is stuck at a distinct left tilt. And two, the batteries stopped charging more than about 30%, for a few days, and then stopped charging at all. It stopped even being able to recognize that it was plugged in -- there is a safety feature that keeps the chair from driving when the charger is connected, and that stopped happening.
Having maximum charge of 30%-ish kept me to the house out of fear the chair would totally die, but the tilt and the complete lack of charging meant I had to switch to my backup chair for about a week. Said chair functions, but half the functions don't work (or I can't reach the controls) and it won't tilt even *back* any more, so it is wildly uncomfortable and also keeps me in the house out of fear I will smash my foot (which, without tilting, is very low to the ground) on uneven pavement.
The charging issue got sort of resolved Friday, in that a guy from the wheelchair place came out with diagnostic tools and said that the side charging port was indeed fried, but there was a charging port through the joystick. The tilt issue did not get resolved, since that would take
So I switched back to my regular chair, but it turns out it's just as uncomfortable as the backup chair. (And while it is safe for me to go out in, it is stuck in narcoleptic snail speed, which is frustrating.)
I can't sit in the chair as is, because gravity makes me slide down so the arm rest digs into my hip very painfully, and without the ability to tilt the chair I can't recenter myself or shift back up. I've been trying various methods of jacking up the left side of my body, but none of them have worked particularly well so far. Rolled up towels, for the record, are ... not squishy.
Today was an epitome of miserable. I stayed in bed as long as possible but had a meeting from 2-4 that I had to be at. Towel under my left leg and flattish pillow for extra padding under my butt meant I was listing left but not falling over, and theoretically was supposed to get me through the meeting more or less unscathed.
By half an hour in, I was uncomfortable. By an hour in, that upgraded to pain. Full body pain, but centered in my tailbone (poor battered tailbone that had been completely under assault this last week) and left thigh. By the time I got out of the meeting I was up to an 8 on the pain scale, peaking to 10 if I tried to tilt back (since the process of tilting put more pressure on my tailbone area). There was no comfortable position to sit in. I had full body tension to go with the pain, and ... well, let me share what I posted elsesite, late this afternoon:
Currently recovering from a sobbing -- but carefully silent so I wouldn’t bother my roommate -- meltdown. Everything hurts, getting back into the “good” chair didn’t fix anything, the seat cushion is old and hard and using towels to compensate for the stuck side tilt doesn’t help, and I’m exhausted and hurting and discouraged and I don’t think I’ll ever get a new chair and I’m being horrible to my mom
and now I have a headache and my nose is stuffed up and my eyes are leaking and nothing’s actually better
and the following is rot13ed for suicidal ideation: naq V’z tynq V qba’g unir npprff gb n tha orpnhfr bgurejvfr V’q or, jryy, grzcgrq gb hfr vg evtug abj, abg orpnhfr V jnag gb qvr ohg orpnhfr fheivivat vf gbb uneq evtug abj
and I just. I don’t have any cope left and everything hurts and I can’t.
I am in bed now, infinitely more comfortable -- pain is down to about a 6 and mostly just my back and tailbone -- and much much calmer. I also think my body is actually relaxing for the first time all day. (The ability to tilt back all the way has proven less than useful -- while being flat on my back would have been nice, the transition to get there only put more pressure on my tailbone area, to the point where I was sobbing in agony before I could even get partway back, so I was never able to go all the way back while in the chair.)
My dad brought over a memory foam wedge to try tomorrow that will hopefully help. I'm not sure whether it would be better to have the memory foam on top of the seat cushion, or between the seat cushion and the frame below it. If the memory foam doesn't work, I will most likely end up back in the backup chair until the lateral tilt on the current chair starts behaving.
Needless to say, this all is ... frustrating is an understatement. And sort of interferes with doing anything at all.