The Chariot Has Arrived!

So on Monday, Connor's wheelchair was delivered.

I spent a total of about two hours readjusting Connor's wheelchair seat to fit him properly and figuring out exactly how to fold, unfold and put everything together. Here's a shot of Connor in his newly put-together wheelchair with the stroller base. The quick chassis and jogging stroller are hanging out in the background.

He has to have one for school, there's no question about that. All the same, this thing is... huge. I mean, HUGE. Connor looks like some sort of doll perched up in the top of the thing. When we first received the chair, they had to screw a big wooden block onto the footrests so that Connor's feet didn't dangle in mid-air. I'm going to look like I'm just too lazy to carry him.

We are using the EASyS system. Basically, we have one chair and a number of bases that go with it. There's the "stroller" base, which is the only one that is okay for use in a vehicle. Then there's the "quick chassis," which is what our physical therapist termed a "high-low" base. This base has a hydraulic system in it that allows us to raise and lower Connor's chair to the appropriate height for whomever he's interacting with. This is also the base that we are most likely to be using in school. We also have the jogging stroller base, for when I'm looking for a bit of masochism and banging my head against the door jam just isn't going to be enough for the day. Ever tried pushing a twenty three pound kid in a fifty pound stroller up a hill? Loads of fun, I tell you.

After Jeremy got home we switched the chair over to the quick chassis base and lots of fun in the middle of the living room ("...and NOW you're UP, Connor! And NOW you're DOWN!! And now you're UP again! And now...") which is pretty typical of Jer and my maturity level. Trust me, if this thing didn't have a 110 pound weight limit, we would have been hitching rides.

At any rate, they are in the house now and ready for school, which is looming on the horizon in the next few months. Now there's just the problem of where the heck I'm going to store these things when not in use, given that I have a grand total of four closets in my house, none of which is more than two feet deep.

Sigh.

~Jess