Saved from being scammed

Yes! For once my wheelchair was an asset.  I have been very anxious the last few weeks, pondering how to both keep safe in my flat and to go on functioning with coronavirus around.  People I know have all been very generous and understanding.  They have all been within reach either online or at the end of a phone.  My phone and internet act as lifelines to the outside world at the best of times, and even more so in these strange days.  So when I was rung by someone from my provider telling me that my service would go down unless I were to take particular action I took it seriously.

I was asked to provide certain details, which, not knowing off the top of my head, I trundled off to find.  I tried to contain my rising panic by slowing down and trying to think sensibly.  Into this room for this piece of information and into that for the other….  It took me a while to find where I had stowed the answers and to unearth all the requested information.  On my return to my phone and laptop, I discovered that the call had been ended.  In my dread at the idea of being cut off I rang my provider – only to find that it had all been a hoax.  No one had rung me, and nothing was at risk.

I guess that the person on the other end thought I was playing a trick on them and was wasting their time by leaving the call open and not doing anything. My slowness in finding the requested information had acted in my favour and saved me from real problems online.  I avoided putting all those details stored virtually at risk and saved all my contacts from potential risk as well.

Picture me earnestly seeking the correct answers to questions put in malice and the person on the other end thinking that they had been rumbled!  If only I could write a skit about it!  Will someone take up the challenge? It is sad that now I feel that I have to be suspicious about contact from people I don’t know as the world is stressful enough as it is at the moment without the need for additional sources of anxiety.

Movement saved me from a lot of complications, and long may it continue, for Movement is Life.  Rosie

 

Next time, maybe that long-promised entry on taking photos

Wheelchair-bound with the Coronavirus around

What should I do?  What I take from all the advice is that it is essential for me to self-isolate.  But how am I to implement that in practice?  There are limits on my abilities caused by my muscular dystrophy and the fact that I use a wheelchair twenty-four hours a day.  I am reliant on a number of people who come in for such varied things as washing my hair, to preparing food or cleaning and tidying my flat.  If I drop something in a place that is inaccessible to me or my grabber, I need to call on someone to pick it up for me.

In other words, I need to allow people in to my flat.  Although no one would put me at risk by coming if they knew they were infected with anything, let alone the coronavirus, how extensive should the precautions I take be?  If I were able-bodied but were self-isolating, the advice is clear: no visitors of any sort, whether family or friends to be in the house.  And if I were able-bodied, but not self-isolating, the advice is still not to have visitors.  But I cannot function without other people.  So what measures do I take?

Ensuring that everyone who comes in washes their hands for at least the recommended twenty seconds is easy enough to enforce.  But I know that a number of the people who come in and help me, especially my cleaners on whom I rely and who have become friends, have travelled on public transport.  Should I prevent them from coming in because they may unwittingly pick up the virus?  Someone has suggested that I ask them to take all their clothes off when they come in and to put on a lab coat that will be kept clean by being washed at 60⁰.  But is that realistic?  I have opted for the lab coat, but no stripping!

Other friends and neighbours have been immensely kind, bringing me tins of food and other supplies.  My friend who maintains my massage regime insists that everything has to be wiped down before it can be stored away.  Sensible advice, but this too requires someone to do it for me – not only the wiping but the putting away.  Some things are too heavy for me and some of my shelves are out of reach.  So, back to my dilemma of who to allow into my flat – or do I solve this by not allowing physical objects in?  What a paradox!

And then, what to do about my massage which I currently have a few times a week?  I need massage both to ease pain and keep me flexible, so that I can exercise and thus maintain as much functional movement as possible for as long as possible.  My friend who massages me at home and who has developed a programme specialised for my needs does not live nearby and usually comes and stays overnight.  She usually takes the train, tube and bus to get to me, but the last time she came she drove all the way because of well-publicised advice to avoid public transport.  But she is now also in the position of self-isolating – and since first writing this, the country has been placed in lockdown and cannot come whether she were self-isolating or not.  So that weekly session is out the window for the time being.

Then,  before lockdown, I thought of going across town by bus for another session with my osteopath, something I usually do weekly.  This would not only have put me on public transport but also in a space, which although scrupulously clean, is in effect a public space.  The strict advice was be not to go, but for me such sessions are essential to maintaining my ever-dwindling physical abilities.  It might seem odd for someone who has never had to think about it before, but I need to maintain muscle strength in my arms for something as natural as eating.  And I need to maintain muscle strength in order to continue being able to swallow.  Such treatment is, for me, not a luxury or an indulgence.

My current dilemma, not made any easier by the lockdown, is where to draw the lines.

But despite the dilemma, I will keep moving for Movement is Life.  Rosie

 

Next time… no predictions as to a topic

 

 

The extraordinary ordinary

A trip on the London Underground is not something many people look forward to.  For me it holds all the excitement of a child let loose in a sweet shop as I have the chance to use it so rarely. I wanted to visit a close friend who lives on the other side of London from me to see how she had adapted her house to her needs.

Travelling all the way by bus would have been horrendously long, so although I had to use two buses, one at either end of my journey, I was able to cut short the middle part by taking the Victoria Line from Finsbury Park to Brixton.  It was thrilling to take the lift down to the platform and sail on to the tube train.  Exiting at the other end via a lift was straightforward too.  Judging from the reaction I got, I don’t think many people had seen a wheelchair user on the tube.

My friend, who also has limited mobility, has adapted her Victorian terraced house for her needs.  Accessing the house was straightforward, but joy of joys, I could also go in to her garden as she had installed a deck and a ramp to take her down to her flowers.

In order to accommodate all she needed on the ground floor of her house, a single-storey side extension has been sympathetically added. The kitchen was delightful with lots of up-to-date facilities, a high cupboard which goes up and down at the touch of a button, a drawer which is easily accessible for cleaning products and a special up-and-down chair that takes you from standing to sitting at the elegant, pedestal kitchen table.

Next to the kitchen was a utility area which houses a wet room as well as some white goods.  The problem with many household white goods for many people with mobility issues is accessing them.  The washing machine and a medicine fridge had been installed on raised platforms, making them user-friendly.  This utility space is also equipped with a cantilevered lift, which can take a wheelchair over three steps. There is another lift next to the front reception room. This is a button-operated through-house lift into which I could drive in my wheelchair to take me upstairs.

I cannot recall when I last accessed anything other than ground floors in a private house, but in my friend’s house, I could go upstairs.  Curiosity got the better of me and I explored fully, taking advantage of looking at spaces that would have remained out of reach without this lift.  Upstairs were two bedrooms and a wonderful wet room with a rising toilet.

Clever design and technology were used to fit out a Victorian terraced house to enable my friend to continue in a much-loved home. It was done in a way that maintained her personality, blending functionality with style. It was inspiring to see how much can be done to enable someone to make good use of all their space and to remain independent for as long as they want.

I’m already plotting my next tube excursion, for Movement is Life.  Rosie

 

Next time, maybe that entry on taking photos

Holiday snaps

As promised a while ago, here are some photos from my time in Spain.  Travelling about was not difficult once I got to know the ropes.  In big towns like Malaga, Cordoba and Granada, local buses were wheelchair accessible.  Travelling by public transport between towns was easy although coaches had to be booked two days in advance.  The coaches were… coachlike:

 

Roughly in the middle of the coach is the door that was used to install me in the interior of the vehicle:

Turning from the lift into the coach was not hard as the turning circle had been well thought out.

Travelling by train did not require pre-booking, although it is probably wise to do if you know when you are going to make a journey:  there is a chance that you could get to the station and find the train’s wheelchair space is already taken up.  Accessing the train was a matter of using a ramp:

This talk of trains and coaches makes it sound as if I travelled around all the time.  But I spent a fair amount of time in Malaga.  The seafront in Malaga, near my hotel, Ilunion, was easy to negotiate in my wheelchair, and allowed me to soak up the sun although the sea itself remained at a distance:

But the hotel pool gave me glorious access to the watery realms:

I often had it to myself and was able to carry out my usual daily exercises and more in the freedom offered by this expanse of supporting water.

Exercising in this pool was one reason I chose to stay in this hotel, for Movement is Life.  Rosie

 

Next time, maybe something on the difficulty of taking photos

Wheelchair ups and downs

It has been almost a year since I received my smart new Ottobock wheelchair after a number of months of dodgy operations with my old Salsa M.  I thought that was it, all travel troubles over, and if not quite a wheelchair bounce in my life, at least I could look forward to plain sailing in my personal propulsion unit on pavements beckoning with the possibility of unbound adventure in my landlocked sea.  My wheelchair would not be as exotic as a ship of the desert, but my ship of the urban space could take me to places both familiar and uncharted by me.  (And we wheelchair users need new maps of our space charting how we can navigate them – the high peaks of unsurmountable kerbs, the lows of potholes and the obstacles of pavement furniture and clutter.)  I was looking forward to stress-free encounters with the outside world.

Oh, how the hopeful tumble! After initial stumbling blocks in the way of foot rests that were not for me (causing real tumbles), the wrong tyres, a battery that did not hold its charge and a faulty motor, I am now on to my second Ottobock chair.  The company has been very helpful and understanding but it has been a fraught year for me.  I received the new chair a few weeks before my holiday in Spain, but because of my experiences with the first one, instead of travelling with this comfortable new chair, I took the second-hand Salsa Mini that I had felt compelled to buy as the original Ottobock was not proving to be as reliable as it should be.

I have been using this new Ottobock on and off for about eight weeks now. I think the problems I ran in to with the first chair were the result of it being a new model and I ran into teething problems that were only identified with use. Who would expect to be stranded round the corner from home on a short supermarket trip to see what fruit was on sale and to buy some?  But this is what happened to me. Also, I may not be a typical electric wheelchair user in that I go out a fair amount and try not to let distance deter me.  There are a number of things I have learnt about the Ottobock and wheelchair use.

One design feature, in my eyes a failure not corrected on this second chair, relates to the TEN controller: the wheelchair is designed with outdoor use in mind, but if the controller gets wet it will sometimes not function as it is only showerproof.  This means that if it is raining seriously I need to keep the controller sheltered from the wet.  But one of the characteristics of the outdoors is that it is not always dry.  Would anyone design a car that needed special attention when it rains?  Hmmm.

Another feature that I find misleading also relates to the TEN controller.  It is hard to know how much battery is left as the indicator lights do not go down consistently as on the Salsa controller.  The light fluctuates, sometimes dipping very low after having appeared to show a healthy battery.  I wonder if the machine is so high spec that it appears to use up the battery more quickly, perhaps impacting on the wheelchair range.  Imagine filling your car with petrol, and the full tank shows as almost empty only twenty minutes later because it is dark and you are driving up a hill.  Not reassuring.  My worry levels fluctuate in sympathy with the lights!

Briefly, here are some of the important things I have learnt from this last year of wheelchair ups and downs:

Don’t take delivery of a new wheelchair in the week before Christmas. If anything goes wrong you have to wait an age to be able to speak to someone and for it to be looked in to.

I felt bounced in to taking out a contract for the maintenance of the wheelchair immediately. This was unnecessary as the chair was under guarantee.  Beware!  And if you do buy a contract, consider whether you need what seems to be the most comprehensive or if the basic one will do.  Having chosen the most expensive care package, I discovered that the basic one would have suited me just as well.

Learn how the battery needs to be nurtured. I’ve learnt that the batteries on my wheelchair/s need at least 8 hours charging even if they look fully charged. If a chair is not being used a lot make sure it is fully charged at least once a week.

Trust in your gut feeling. When I got the original Ottobock I felt that there was something not right but because I had not had one before I had nothing to compare it to. Now I am more familiar with the chair – nearly a year down the line I think I can use my gut to know if there is something wrong. Recently, I was out in the pouring rain and the chair cut out. I realised I had used the chair all day in central London, that I was now on a hill with the chair too tilted and full lights on (with the controller covered).  This was too much for the chair so I just switched it off, adjusted the tilt, switched the lights off and got safely home.

Faulty wheels or no, I have not been deterred from travelling this year, for Movement is Life.  Rosie

 

Next time, maybe a blog with photos from my time in Spain

Southern Spain: Sun and Sea

There’s nothing like the sun to cheer me up, especially when faced with the prospect of a long, cold, dull winter when it is not easy for me to go outdoors on a whim.   I recently went to Malaga where the microclimate was between 20 and 25 degrees Celsius with full sun most days. The place offers both sea and city and is close enough to Cordoba, Granada and Seville for day trips to be possible.

I stayed at the Ilunion Hotel, housed in a modern high-rise building that was close to everything I wanted: a ten-minute walk from the sea front, fifteen minutes from the town centre and ten minutes from train and bus station.

The hotel room was the best I have ever had for getting around in. The wet room was so good and thoughtfully arranged that I didn’t need to use my wheelchair to hoist myself off the toilet.  There was plenty of room to circulate in my chair, for instance after showering. The shower itself was excellent, with a seat if needed.  The tiles were the best non-slip ones I have had in a hotel. As I can slip on tarmac this was a true accolade. I still used my own non-slip mat when showering however but was basically independent.

The hotel had a covered pool heated to 28-30 degrees. There was also a hoist so it was perfect for me. The ambient air was the warmest I have ever experienced in an indoor pool. The cover is removed in the summer so it becomes an outdoor pool. A drawback of the design is that it is in the courtyard of the hotel and is surrounded by the high-rise structure. As a result, the pool and the small bit of outdoor space around it didn’t get the sun.  It may be different in summer when it would be a blessing to be outdoors without the sun beating down on your head.

A shortcoming of the hotel was that there was no nice outdoor space to sit and relax in and as it was not actually on the sea front you could not just pop out to sit in the sun watching the sea for fifteen minutes or so.

Malaga is very walkable but I used the bus around the city when my friend got tired. Ramps on buses were very good. I used the sightseeing hop on hop off bus which was fully accessible too.  I made excursions to Marbella and Granada.  The coach for these had to be booked two days in advance, but the system worked extremely well.  I went to Cordoba as well, but by train.  The train is much faster than the coach and did not need to be reserved in advance. But beware there is only one wheelchair space so it could be booked up. The prices on the train vary depending on its speed. My train to Cordoba took an hour and cost 75 euros per person.  Unlike here, there was no disabled concession.  A slower train was less expensive.  The coach would have been a lot cheaper but would have taken two and a half hours each way, too long for a day trip. In both Cordoba and Granada we took a site-seeing bus which was fully accessible and excellent. I had visited Al Hambra and the Mosque in Cordoba on previous visits so it was nice to get a perspective of the two towns and meander round the beautiful streets.

My holiday was a wonderful brief break from the rain and the cold.  I’ll keep rolling on, for Movement is Life.  Rosie

 

Next time, probably something about what I used to meander about, bringing you an update on my wheelchair situation

 

Rolling to a halt

What a number of weeks I have had!  My lovely wheelchair developed a problem with the new grey wheels which replaced the ones leaving black marks on my new carpet.  I found I was skidding about and didn’t know why.  It transpired that the new wheels needed to be regularly filled with air, and no one had told me.  But even if I had known, I would not have been able to fill my tyres with air myself.  Yet another imposition on my friends and something to have to remember to have checked once a month or so!  A wheelchair that enables independence is wonderful, but to have it limited by its wheels is not so great.  Thankfully, the wheels have now been changed to solid ones, and the bill for replacing them picked up by someone else.

The wheelchair also developed a terrible creaking sound which required investigation.  It turned out that there was something wrong with part of the motor.  This has now been oiled, but there is a slow drip which has to be wiped away regularly.  Fortunately, the wheelchair is not dripping on my carpet.  This is only because I have felt impelled to buy a second chair because of all the problems I have been having.  This chair, bought second-hand at great expense, is not as comfortable as the other one.  It is a bit smaller and not as stable, but is good for using indoors.  But most of all, it gives me reassurance that I will be able to get around, both indoors and out, one way or another.

To take stock, my new wheelchair has had a new footplate, new battery, new wheels and work done on the motor all within a period of six months.  During this time, because of the wheelchair, I have fallen, been confined indoors, and been rattled regarding its quality.

My woes go on.  The other day I was stranded in my pool.  The keypad that operates the hoist I need to use to get in and out had been playing up so it was changed to a newer model – one that was not identical to my old one.  With the new keypad in place, I got into the water, did my exercises and was ready to get out.  But the hoist wouldn’t work and I was stuck!  Only a week or so earlier, my builder had insisted that I install a fixed phone within reach of my pool.  But as it is new, I have not yet programmed it with all my friends’ phone numbers.  And to complicate matters, the phone numbers I remembered first off were of people who did not have my key – and earlier that day I had noticed that the last person to use the keys from my keysafe had not put them back.  Foolishly I did not correct this oversight myself but was waiting for someone agile to come and do it for me as it is not in the most convenient place for me to reach.

Reluctant to ring the fire brigade to haul me out of the water – and yes, unsurprisingly I know their number – I calmed myself down enough to fish out from my memory the number of a neighbour who holds the key.  Rescue was on its way!  And the first solution worked!  The old keypad was plugged back in, the sticky key pressed hard and lo and behold, the hoist worked.  I rose from the water feeling like a Venus after being stuck in it for two hours longer than normal.

But while in the pool, my eye level was perfect for watching and counting my wheelchair’s dripping of oil onto the floor tiles.  This would have been great therapy to send me to sleep, but that was the last thing I wanted to do while in the water.

I am still Rosie without a ramp.  I bought a suitcase ramp in the hope that I would find some way to carry it on the new wheelchair, but the design of the chair means there is no space to fix it on the back.  Somebody suggested I buy a set of the wheels people used to strap their suitcases to in the days before the cases themselves had wheels and push the ramp in front of me.  If I give it a go, I’ll let you know the result, but I suspect this would be too heavy for me to push in any controlled way.

The series of unfortunate incidents and the lack of progress on the ramp front has led me to think of turning my blog into more of an occasional update: it seems to have drifted from my original intention of providing upbeat notes on disability aids and such like into a grumble fest of late.

For those of you for whom my blog provides essential reading, don’t worry! I’ll be back some time, for Movement is Life.  Rosie

 

 

Am I grabbing?

Yes! You bet ya.  When I sat – which is pretty much my permanent state when I am not lying down – and thought about it, I realised that I grab all the time.  I have a selection of grabbers to pick things up.  They have different functions and are of different robustness.

But before turning to implements, I have to state that I have long arms and my waist is pretty flexible, so if I am out and about and drop something near me, like my bottle of water, I can bend to pick it up from the ground.  Of course I do this at home too!

So now to grabbers: as they come in different lengths this is the first thing to consider.  How long do you want it to be?  This depends partly on how long your arms are and partly on how heavy the things you want to pick up are likely to be. The longer the grabber the less you have to bend, but the less weight you can lift.  So for example if you want to pick up a bit of litter, a lid, a bit of soap or a piece of cutlery (all things I frequently drop) a longer grabber is best (especially if you are standing). If you want to pick up heavier things a shorter one is better: I use a grabber to take my washing out of the washing machine. The one I turn to for this is a much shorter grabber as the wet items are often quite heavy and I am sitting in my chair when I empty the machine.

Having settled on length, the second thing to consider is what type of end you want. There are those that are like a pincer where both ends move inward to pick up an item and there are more common ones with a small magnet on the end as well as one arm that moves in to pick things up. I prefer the first sort, with the pincer movement.  They can be rotated 90 degrees if necessary, and allow you to reach awkward spaces. The grabbers also have ends of different sizes so this is another thing to consider.

A third thing to think about is the handle as they do vary. The one I prefer has a thicker handle but I do not have hand problems and am not sure what would be best for someone who does.  For me the action of operating the grabber is easy as I can still squeeze my hand without difficulty, but I would guess that if this is difficult for someone, there may be a grabber with an easier action.  Such a simple and useful implement, but with so many variations, and with possible permutations that I did not think to consider until writing this.  We live and learn!

My advice is to look at all the different types on the internet, taking these three aspects into consideration and if possible then go to a shop where you can try them.

Whether with a grabber in my hand or not, I shall go on picking things up, for Movement is Life.  Rosie

 

Next time, maybe something on a possible solution for a ramp!

 

 

 

 

Having a breakdown

Anyone expecting to read my gripping feedback about grabbers and suchlike is going to have to contain their impatience for a bit longer.  For, guess what! my lovely new wheelchair broke down!  The proper new footplate had just been fitted, meaning that I no longer have to tilt the chair back when turning to prevent the front wheels knocking into them.  The sun was shining, and I was over the moon!

Then disaster struck. On my way to my weekly choir the wheelchair conked out! I needed to be pushed back home, with the wheelchair set to manual.   This is hard work for anyone, and it took two people to push me and my chair up the ramp at my door.  I was upset of course but felt okay as after all I had paid £800 for a care package.

Realising that it was the battery (I had been here before with my hire chair) I wrote an email that night to the company, explaining what had happened.  I received a prompt reply the next morning to say that saying that they would arrange for an engineer to come to see what was going on and, in the meantime, would order a new battery and charger.  As the battery had charged overnight, I was not worried.  But that afternoon, about 4.30, the battery seemed to go again. I rang the care package company again, and it was arranged that an engineer would come the following morning.  I was also told that a new battery and charger would take 5 to 6 days to arrive as it had to be ordered from Germany – my wheelchair is German. I could not believe that they did not hold stocks! If I had known this I would have thought twice about buying a German chair; however I didn’t think about asking at the time.

I asked the care-package company for a replacement wheelchair to tide me over this period of time as I was too scared to go out with an unreliable battery. I was told that I would have to hire a wheelchair myself as a replacement was not included in my package. I was shocked, but on reading the contract I discovered that they were right. Hiring a wheelchair with a seat riser at short notice is not easy, but living alone, not able to get off a chair of normal height and hardly able to walk is not funny.  I rely on my wheelchair to navigate my flat, so it is not an optional item in my life.  If only it were…

When the engineer did come, he told me to charge my wheelchair for at least 2 hours in the afternoon when I wasn’t using it in the hope that it wouldn’t conk out. I had been previously told that this was the wrong thing to do to the battery, but in these circumstances it would be fine as I would be getting a new one soon.

Unhappy, but having no choice in the matter, I confined myself to my flat for the nine days it took to replace the battery: I was scared to venture out as the battery obviously was not reliable. The battery just about coped with my travels up and down my corridor and in and out of rooms before needing a boost every so often. The lighting indicator was inconsistent saying that the battery was low, then that it was fine before then lighting up again as low, followed by the battery suddenly conking out completely. As the week progressed I suspect the battery got worse and my indoor confinement was confirmed as the right choice to have made.

As a result of this experience I have decided I need a back-up chair. Hiring a chair in an emergency (which would be a cheaper option in the short-term) is dependent on a suitable chair being available.  For me, this needs to be one with a seat-riser, and these are not commonly stocked.  Also, hire chairs cannot be delivered immediately.

I am very happy with the wheelchair itself: teething problems have been sorted out, it is comfortable and robust.  But, however one acquires a wheelchair, whether through a local authority scheme, privately or through Motability, the terms of the back-up package should be explained before acquisition as this is an important part of the decision for people like me who rely on wheelchairs all day every day.  I had received my last wheelchair through the local authority who had been responsible for the care package, but when I got my new chair it was not explained to me until after acquisition that the scheme and system had changed and that I would need to pay a premium to another organisation for care.  This is not good enough and highlights how systems are not joined up, leaving people in situations like mine in a difficult position when things go wrong.

But hey, life goes on, and Movement is Life.  Rosie

 

Next time, maybe those gadgets that ease my life.  Who knows!

 

 

 

New wheelchair, new ramp

My old telescopic portable ramps are no longer safe to use and I need to buy a new set.  Added to merely finding the right ramp is now the matter of how to carry them on my new wheelchair.  I had a wooden platform-cum-box fitted to my old chair.  It was made for me by a local garage, and now I need to devise a new system for my new chair.  This is not going to be so easy as the back of the chair, where the ramp will have to go, seems to offer a less wide space, some of which is also taken up with boxes of various sizes that contain the essential workings of the chair.

I don’t think I’ll buy the same set of telescopic channel ramps again although it would probably be easy enough to devise a way to carry them as they are reasonably narrow.  They were not really good for my needs – the narrow channels for the wheels did not seem to be designed for wheelchairs where the wheels are not set to go only in a straight line.  This meant that my wheels span and got caught on the sides every time I used the ramps.  Someone had to position the ramps just so and guide me onto them, and someone had to be behind me to push the chair up or down in order to overcome the problem of the spinning wheels. So something that I wanted in order to be independent and access places really required me and two additional people!

The length of the ramp determines how many steps you can safely straddle, with a longer length able to lift you over more than one step.  But all increases in length of course also mean an increase in weight.  Ramps seem to fold in different ways, being characterised as crossfold or multifold.  I have identified two ramps from The Ramp People (https://www.theramppeople.co.uk/) that may suit, but I need to work out the dimensions.  Also, although it may be possible to visit the showroom – I don’t know – this wouldn’t really be easy for me given that it is not near where I live.  It could however be worthwhile if I come away with the right product.

I need advice on the length of ramp I will need, how it folds and the size when folded.  Then I need to work out whether it will be possible to carry it on my wheelchair somehow.  At least I am not going backwards – I know that telescopic channel ramps are not right for me!

Ramp or no ramp, I’ll still be out and about, visiting friends, for Movement is Life.  Rosie

 

Next time, maybe something on gadgets that I find useful