Hey Dad

You can imagine our delight when we received the news that Daniel will receive his first electric wheelchair. Daniel is 13 years old and, as a lover of both fast cars and the highly successful car show Top Gear, we knew the thought of getting behind a motorised anything would having him busting with excitement.

He was sitting in the lounge room watching TV when Penny and I came in to tell him the news. While the first sound that came out of his mouth were screams of delight we thought we had anticipated what his first questions would be, When do I get it?, Do I get a choice?, Can I test drive it? …

You could have seen the blood drain from our faces when his first question was, How high can I jump it?

After getting over the initial shock, as well as having a bit of a laugh about it, we then started thinking of the other implications of receiving an electric wheelchair:

• charging
• transporting
• insurance
• usage
• social response.

Charging

Charging is not so much of a problem; buy two chargers, one for school and one for home. We will leave the wheelchair at school charging overnight and on the weekend bring it home.

Transporting

Transporting is an interesting question though… We ended up choosing a wheelchair that, after testing, we could dismantle it so that it would could be driven up into the back of our station wagon. Daniel can sit in a normal passenger seat of the car so there was no point in doing a $30k disability fit out of a 14 year old vehicle that had done 200,000 kms.

Insurance

As a project manager I am always on the lookout for risks and it suddenly dawned on me, what if …

• the wheelchair was damaged by someone or something
• Daniel injured a child at school by running or bumping into them (Don’t forget, with Daniel’s weight this wheelchair will weigh close to 130kg)
• Daniel accidentally ran into a parked car.

I rang the NRMA (our current house and content insurer) to find out. The result is we can have the wheelchair listed as a Specified Portable item and, under our contents insurance, we are covered for:

• the wheelchair’s theft from home, car or the school
• damage to the wheelchair
• damaged caused to property or people by the wheelchair under the current contents insurance liability cover.

Usage

This poses an interesting topic that perhaps people who use a wheelchair are much better to answer than I, but here goes …

As parents, we can tell Daniel what he can or cannot do with the wheelchair. We can also advise him that as he is now in control of a heavy motorised piece of equipment that he has to have a greater level of awareness of his surroundings so he doesn’t accidentally back up over people, etc.

On a whole other level is the concept of personal boundaries. Where does Daniel stop and public access start. This was something that I had previously had never considered before because as Daniel was always in his manual wheelchair it always took one of us to push him around but it has really important implications. For example, one of the kids at school, who is in an electric wheelchair, does not like his chair being touched without invitation as he considers his chair part of his body, i.e. Part of his space, his personal boundary. Just like us, would we have a conversation with a stranger while at the same time resting our hand on their shoulder? The answer is obviously no, however I am sure our friends who use wheelchairs have probably had this happen on the odd occasion (I would love to hear your stories on this so please reply).

The last topic is a beauty… Why does it have to look disabled?

Stay tuned for my next blog on this topic!!

Meanwhile, your thoughts and feedback on the above would be really appreciated.