The latest… on the power chair

Today was the scheduled day for the vendor tech and whoever else, to visit and fix the things on my power chair that were determined to need it at the March 15 meeting. I know, I know that was five weeks ago. I, like you, wonder why it has taken so long.

No one knows how difficult it is to meet with people who are in charge of getting things for us nursing home residents. They think they are doing wonderful things – and maybe they are. But I don't quite see it that way. To me, I would want to make the resident feel better about themselves. But, neither the vendor tech nor the manufacturer tech has ever done that. I've always thought they just caved to negative PR and maybe pressure from nursing home management and elsewhere.

They were supposed to come at 11 AM. But, they showed up at 10:14 a.m. and wanted me out of the chair. Now, they could have communicated that. It would have made it a lot easier all the way around. Of course, I wanted to watch what they were doing and was not allowed to do that. They took the chair outside to make some of the adjustments.

I wished I would have had a family member or friend here with me. I should have had somebody call in. Then someone besides me would know what was happening. But, since we were not sitting in a meeting room talking and doing nothing, calling in did not make much sense. I was on my own, as they say.

They put new nonslip material on the foot rests. I don't know why I was expecting a great job, but I was. I was shocked when I saw that the grip they put on was uneven and raggedy on the edge. I asked the vendor tech if he could trim it better. He said, "It's hard to cut rubber". I wanted to tell him that I didn't really give a darn it was hard to cut it.. The chair cost over $14,000 and should look top-notch. To me it's on them if they made it look less than that.

I had to get in my manual chair. Doing that always makes me feel less than dynamic. But they needed me out of the chair. They moved the back of the seat forward 8°. I had requested 3° to 5° and said I thought 8° was too much. But the vendor tech told me that 8° was the increment. I wasn't believing that for second. This isn't the first power chair I have ever had.

Getting into the chair with the straighter back was a bit more difficult. It made me feel like I was going to fall out. I no longer flop in it like I have for ten months. They raised the foot rests one half inch. They told me they angled the front of each foot rests up a bit, but it doesn't look like it.  Unfortunately, my left foot can still move on that nonslip surface. I don't quite understand that. There is also a lot of play in the foot rests. The techs say it's allowable movement.

Now that the seatback is higher my left arm is farther forward. So, the joystick bracket needed to be adjusted. The joystick was moved farther from my hand, but they did not measure how much farther. It just kills me that they don't think like engineers. They are not concerned that they may have to move it back to the same spot.

They also fixed the Velcro that holds the removable arm pads on. It is now going down instead of up. So I hope it no longer sticks to my clothing during transfers.

To say I feel better about this is not exactly true. I gave up a lot of myself to get a few small things done to that chair which should have been done a long time ago. Why ever did they make me wait so long? How can they even rationalize that wait to themselves?

It isn't easier to run the joystick, for right now, it's more difficult. We have put the chair in speed 3 (slower) and I will use it that way for a while until I get used to the changes. For some reason I thought I would feel like I was sitting in a chariot that would do my bidding. Instead, I feel like an intimidated little girl.

I have no idea why things happened that way they did, But this is a fair postmortem of the occurrences this morning.