On the hunt

Yesterday we went down to Garstang for a trip out. It was a trip with a purpose.

This last year or so, even before the pneumonia, the Fox has been beginning to feel his years – he’s 69 - & is increasingly finding pushing me up & down hills, across cobbled streets, along odd cambers etc. hard going. The solution we thought was to add some power to the wheelchair.

So we found a shop that sold a “powerstroller”, the nearest being at Barnacre, just outside Garstang. This is a means of attaching a battery to a wheelchair making it easier for a pusher to push.

When we got there we found what we were looking for, attached to a chair already. Sure it made it a lot easier for the Fox to push me around the showroom. However, it also made it a lot harder for me to push myself around, something which makes me more dependent on someone to help me. In theory it only takes seconds to take the device off – indeed it is essential to remove it if the chair is to be folded up to go in the boot of a car for example. However, the battery etc. is surprisingly heavy & the seconds necessitate turning the wheelchair upside down to get to the release mechanism. We are left wondering how often you would want to do that, especially on a cold wet day. We left the shop in thought.

We stopped in Garstang, to one of its numerous pubs for some refreshment & to talk over our initial impressions. Afterwards we had a stroll round the pretty canalside town before stopping at a pub outside the town for a nice dinner of Fish Pie & heading home.

It was good to have a change of scene, especially now the Fox is more or less back to full health. We have a dilemma now. Clearly we’re going have to come to some compromise. For our everyday life we’re fine as we are now. We rarely go great distances or up hills locally. We know the cobbled streets & steep hills to avoid. It’s on holiday the problems arise. Which should we be thinking of – changing our style of holiday or powering up the chair? There is one other solution I’ve found on-line & that is to add a battery to my wheel which increases the power of my every push. Would that also help someone pushing behind? I think that’s the next thing to investigate. That would not mean taking the device off every time we wanted to put the chair in the boot though it would make the chair heavier – too heavy that is the question.

Wish us luck in finding a satisfactory conclusion.