Transitioning to Wheels
October 14, 2020Posted by Kanga. Please do not reblog.
For a couple of years now I have wanted to purchase an electric wheelchair. It proved to be very challenging. I could find what I wanted with online shopping, but this is the kind of purchase you don’t really want to do online. You need to sit in it. Make sure it fits (especially in a country where the average person is half your size). You want to test drive it. Therefore, I needed to find a store where I could see multiple models.
Sounds easy, right?
I had trouble finding stores by searching the internet in English. It just wasn’t happening. So, I thought a medical clinic will know where I can get this. I made an appointment with a neurologist at the last clinic where I had been seen. The clinic is fairly new, so they hadn’t arranged for large medical equipment before, so it took them a while to look into it. They also submitted a request to my medical insurance. The insurance company would only cover a manual wheelchair and turned me down for that, even. The clinic called me on the phone to tell me they had found an electric wheelchair for me which cost RMB 5000.00, would I like to buy it. Over the phone? Sight unseen? Uh, no. I would be better off getting the one from the online source. So, the clinic sent me an email with a picture and the chair’s specs. I still felt like I was being offered a pig in a poke.
I finally got smart and asked my Chinese coworker to help me find a store with multiple models where I could go in person and try them out.
We went. The shop owners didn’t speak any English, but we managed with reading the tags, sitting in different models, and doing a tiny test drive in the small space available. We then signaled that we wanted this model. The clerk showed us how it works – folding it up, how the charger connects, how the controller is attached, how to disengage the motors so it can be pushed. I had been waiting and wanting this for 2 years, so I took the plunge.
It is definitely a transition. Shanghai is not a very wheelchair friendly city. The stores or restaurants I can access are very few. I need to go to a new dentist, but I need my husband to go first and scope it out to see if I can go by chair or have to walk. Is there a ramp? Is there an elevator? Are there steps up to the elevator?
I had thought I would be able to arrange for a driver to get me and the chair to work, so that the driver could be accustomed to the chair and how to put it in the trunk. Nope. Not easy.
So, I had to figure out what route I can take to drive the chair itself to and from work. The sidewalks on our street have a significant section where the sidewalk is barely passable by foot and impossible by chair, so that would mean being in the street itself. Not what I want to be doing. So, there is a pedestrian path along a waterway, so I take that instead. Then I travel down a sidewalk along a major street crossing two intersections. However, I found a couple of obstacles. One intersection has the lowered curbs, but the curb is still too high for the chair. For a while I would stop, turn off the chair, get out of the chair, disengage the motors so that I could push the chair over the curb. The second obstacle is a driveway which I have to cross that is both steep and mounded. Going toward work, I can manage it, but coming the other direction gravity just pulls the chair down the slope and toward the very busy street. After a few days of trying to deal with these challenges, I switched the route to just avoid them. My route is a little longer, but safer. I now travel down a pedestrianized street instead.
The other obstacles are other people. People on scooters. People parking on sidewalks.
Then there is the challenge of getting in and out of our apartment building as the ramp is sometimes blocked by cars or scooters.
The apartment management has been notified and has promised to put up signage – that sad little orange sign in the upper left corner of the picture is it. For about 24 hours these yellow lines were present, but they disappeared. So, I just keep taking pictures when the ramp is blocked and reporting it.
For the most part, I only use the chair to get to and from work. I’ve been to the nearby department store once. That was the most pleasant shopping trip I’ve had in a long time. I wasn’t exhausted or in pain.
I haven’t ventured onto the metro, yet. Maybe that’s the next transition adventure.
Living the Travel Channel 
You are a brave and courageous woman, Kanga. I sincerely hope you can manage to traverse all the places you need to go with safety. Cuz, between you and me, I’d be pretty darn nervous!!! Have you decorated your chair with cute stickers yet? Although, ‘Roll with Kanga’ might be a bit much!