HANDLING AN EMERGENCY.

Posted by Rotciv at 3:00 am, July 26th 2010.
You know it is an emergency when the companion, runs out of the garage door telling you your wife wants you to come back in the house immediately. So, I turn off the car and walk back into the house to find my wife stuck in the doorway to our bedroom, the power chair won't move. The joy stick control is dead, no lights no nothing.
So, I have to get down on the floor, reach underneath the footrest to disengage the drive wheels. Believe me when I tell you the power chair will not move with the drive wheels engaged. Now I have to pull the power chair with Claudia in it (weight about 450lbs combined) out into the living room area where we have some room to work.
We try the usual tricks, such as plugging in the charger to see if that will reboot the computer control, it does not! The control is dead, dead, dead.
To digress for a moment, back a couple of years ago, my right hip was so bad that I couldn't walk anymore. So in co-operation with my orthopedic surgeon I applied for and recieved a power chair, paid for by medicare and my supplemental insurance. At the very same time we had been looking for a power chair for Claudia. Claudia's power chair had to be paid for out of our own pocket, so with some help from one of our children we ordered a duplicate power chair for Claudia.
Both of the chairs arrived on the same day, and as I was saying they are identical.
Back to the emergency, I went out to the garage and drove the twin chair into the house. We then were able to transfer Claudia from the non-operational chair to the operational chair. With the operational chair, Claudia was now able to go to the bathroom. I moved the non working chair over to one corner in the living room and was able to go out to my appointment.
Now! the story doesn't end here. The working chair's batteries were pretty much at the end of their useful life, the batteries wouldm't hold a charge. So, once Claudia was lying down, I had to dismantle both chairs, swap the batteries from one chair to the other, then reassemble both of the chairs. Did I mention that the seats alone weigh about 50 pounds! Each battery weighs another 25-30 lbs.  So swapping the batteries is not an easy task.
Since the joystick control had arced and sparked when it blew out, I decided to call the Rascal Scooter Company, from which we bought the chairs, and find out how much it would cost to repair or replace the controller. Well! some good luck for a change, Dan(the customer service guy) said that he thinks Medicare will pay for replacing the controller, so we wouldn't have to pay anything out of pocket. Since my wheelchair was authorized and paid for by medicare and the chairs were twins, I figured it was a win-win situation for us.
God Bless it we could certainly use the good news.
Victor Winebrenner
 

Tagged as: chair, claudia, power, batteries, emergency, medicare

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"(C) Copyright by Victor Winebrenner"