Thursday night I had just finished watching Grays Anatomy and and was taking in the 9:00 news when the wheelchair I was sitting in essentially imploded. I was sitting in a Quickie 2, a manual wheelchair which collapses for convenient storage. The Quickie 2 has been a wheelchair standard for people with disabilities for more than two decades. The chair is heavy duty yet lightweight and this particular chair I had more than 14 years so I guess I've got my investment out of the device.Still I felt it was just plain rude for the chair to fold the with be in it. It was weird I got the sensation of being squeezed by my chair. I couldn't figure out what was happening. When I tried to roll I found it most difficult my hips were in the spokes, literally. Dianne was sitting behind me on the sofa and could not see my chair self-destruct. It was only after I heard something dragging on chair and had Dianne look under my chair informed me that one of the crossmembers of the chair had broke and was hanging down and we had better do something quick or soon I would be dragging my ass on the floor!

Understand that my manual wheelchair is an intricate part of my life. I rely on this technology to get around inside the house specifically the manual wheelchair allows me to get close enough to the commode to transfer on and off. I also use the chair to get under the sinks of my house as well as close enough to my bed transfer on and off. And I must confess, embarrassingly so, that I really don't have a backup system. It was all Dianne`to get the in the bathroom and on the commode. Two or three years ago I purchased a piece of used equipment from a State program which refurbishes assistive technology particularly wheelchairs I got a solid frame, manual chair, but never really used it because the axles, release axles, which came with a chair were too small to deploy successfully so what we'll was always at risk of coming off whenever I pushed the chair. It was just too much bother to get the chair should—major mistake. But Dianne jumped right in found the chair in the garage, drug the chair in the house and fixed the problem by finding a quick release axle which would secure the wheel to the chair. Even though the chair worked there is still a host of challenges. The biggest challenge being the width of the solid frame. There is a very narrow path between the wall and our bed and the solid frame chair was just not wide enough. I eventually had to jump out of my chair at the bottom of the bed and drag my butt out to the top. It had taken nearly 2 1/2 hours to achieve this desperate solution.

Needless to say we spent the day Friday trying to find a solution to our problem. We thought for sure it would be no problem to find an acceptable wheelchair at one of the DM providers in town. We found one provider who actually indicated they had a 18 inch wide manual wheelchair. Of course when we got to the vendor it was indeed a 18 inch wide manual wheelchair, but it was a real “ dog” . We ended up getting a manual chair from the local I L C (Independent Living Center). I knew this chair would be a challenge at best but I was desperate. We threw the dog chair in the back of a van and at home. There was cold, snowy and depressing.

I grew even more impressed at the end of the day, transferred him to the chair and found it almost impossible to one, to stay in the chair and 2, to push the wheelchair anywhere. Dianne was able to give me in bed this morning we drive solid frame downstairs and I have been using the solid frame sense. I also spent some part of the day on the Internet in various classified pages desperately looking for a used Quickie 2, and I may have found one or two chairs which might work.

I am so thankful Dianne was able to save my butt in the man eating chair and fix my solid frame to a usable status. But I should've had a viable backup system. I am smarter than that I should have a backup system that worked. I commit the change that one way or the other.