Wheelchair Upgrade

Yesterday my sister Margie and I visited Gerald Simonds, a specialist wheelchair company in Aylesbury, taking the NHS wheelchair with us. It's an Invercare Action NG4. 

 This was intended to be merely a recce, but once I'd tried a better chair, there was no going back. The experience made me realise just how safe, conservative and pedestrian the NHS chair is by comparison.  I took the new one, a Helio 2C, out for a trial and my sister, under instruction to stop me tipping over backwards, had to run to keep up with me. It is so much easier to propel. 

 I should get it, from Canada, in about a month's time. We spent two hours there and the salesman was in a wheelchair himself, so was very aware of all the angles.  The new chair is a whole lot neater and more compact and feels as though one is wearing it, rather than being perched on it.

 Unlike the Invercare chair, this one can be adjusted to vary the proportion of weight carried by the main wheels and the castor wheels.  To start with, it will put a higher percentage of weight on the castors. As I get more adept, the castors will be tweaked to take less weight. Then it will become possible to balance the chair, like the cool dude in shades is doing in the colour photo below.

I've used the Invercare chair a lot, for practice, over all sorts of terrain, which experience informed yesterday's purchase. The Invercare chair did the job and got me about, so I mustn't belittle it. It'll become a backup chair.





Comments

  1. Lizrap2 November 2018 at 16:23

    Very interesting! Looking forward to seeing it!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Unknown8 November 2018 at 18:13

    Not much different than bicycle shopping really John! That looks and sounds like one slick machine! I went from a heavy aluminum frame bike to carbon fiber recently and was blown away by the difference! - sarah

    ReplyDelete

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