Looking For An Adventure in an Electric Wheelchair. Part 5
It’s here, first trip out.
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Hello Red Cabbage Heads
How is the world with my fellow chronics? For the new people I have ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis) often know as CFS (chronic fatigue syndrome) a name I disagree with and dislike greatly as it doesn’t encompass in any way all that ME is. I include it purely as that’s what a lot of people know. I’ve been living with this disease for 15+ years and I’ve tried an awful lot of things, to help, 99% of which haven’t.
If you have not been following my journey this is the story of my persuading myself that I deserve to spend an extortionate amount of money on an electric wheelchair so that I can experience the wide world again having been sat on the sofa wishing I could go outside and experience all I could rather than live through Rs stories.
I tested a couple of chairs and chose the Mountain Trike, an off-road chair, as I wanted to go on decent dog walks. We found a second hand one up near Durham and after going to see it, bought it. We needed to get the electric kit added, so ordered it and waited. It was ready just before Xmas and we picked it up just after New Year.
In the meantime we needed to build a secure shed on our parking space as there are steps from our house and it would have been awful to have to carry it up and down every time.
Today I tried it out on the roads for the first time. Here it is in the shed ready to go.
It was an interesting experience. I really enjoyed being out, but I really stressed over the steep hills R took me down. This is him sorting it out for me after I had to stop due to panicking. I was too harsh on the breaks and nearly threw myself out a few times.
We walked by the canal which I worried about falling into. It was great to be out and underneath the panic and the sore hands, I was pleased to be out. (This trike is controlled with twist grips, the left one to turn , accompanied by the brake used by the same hand, but .. if the drive wheel at the back isn’t moving it’s very, very stiff and difficult to move. The accelerator is a twist grip on the right. Getting the degree of twist right is the trick. My hands were sore and stiff afterwards as I was holding on way too hard. I’m sure once I become competent (R said I wasn’t safe) it will be much better.
I need to learn the muscle memory for the controls. That will help immensely. I tend to over compensate with the steering.
Anyways, till next time. Tx
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Oh that's going to be such a good thing ! I hope you can build up your confidence with it - slow and steady I guess. Good luck! What a great strand to your writing too - a series of observations from the chair.
We shall investificate the parklands of the Aire valley: Keighley, Bingley etc to see if we can get you trikeling with confidence before we hit the off-road stuff then.