Thursday, January 05, 2006

I finally have my new power chair

I am writing this while sitting in my brand new power chair. That's right. It finally arrived and I exchanged chairs with Rich Vanderwal of Medi Chair at Lyndhurst today. I was really hard on the loaner. This new chair is much more comfortable as it is custom made for me and that is a big issue as I am 6'2". I fit much better in this chair. It is a silver Invacare Storm TDX4. The silver colour matches the tires so it's pretty cool. The improvements include a centre footplate instead of footrests. This will make it a lot easier to do transfers to and from the chair. The gel cushion is longer than usual and is a lot more comfortable. The backrest and lumbar pad are a lot better too and allows me to sit up straighter and not slide on the cushion. The controller and joystick is a lot closer to the chair and will make it easier to go through doorways. The controller on the other chair would get caught sometimes. It will just take some time to get used to the handling and turn control but we can make adjustments to the chair as we go along. We may need to adjust the speed and turn control to make it easier to get on and off some of those vans. It's all computer controlled. I'll take it out in the street tomorrow and see how it feels over curbs. That's the real test. The main thing is it's great to have my own custom made power chair. I'm a lot more comfortable already. I will return to my regularly scheduled physiotherapy on Tuesday.

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