Watch It!

Some years before Scarecrow's dad died, he suffered a closed-head injury that left him with a variety of cognitive problems, including severely impaired short-term memory, and social skills that were rudimentary on a good day. I have a vivid mental image of this retired Air Force pilot careening down a grocery store aisle in an electric cart, grumbling at all the little old ladies (this would be Tampa/St. Pete, so, statistically speaking, most of the other shoppers would be little old ladies) to "Watch it!!"

Yesterday afternoon, the wheelchair guy brought a loaner chair outfitted with a head array control for me to try for a couple of days. It has proximity switches in the headrest that control all of the chair's functions -- forward, reverse, direction, tilt, recline, everything. The loaner even goes up and down, which my own chair does not. I realize that, at this point, my options for self-propulsion might be this, or nothing. I realize it will take a while to learn to use, although it's looking like my surroundings could take quite a beating in the interim. I'm sure the controls on my own chair could all be customized to work better for me. While I imagine it would all become second nature after a while, I'm not finding this... ah... intuitive. I'm trying not to be in too much of a hurry to decide I hate it.

Unlike the proportional control of a joystick, with a switch you're either moving, or you're not. If the speed is set so you have a chance of safely negotiating corners and turns, you won't live long enough to get where you're going. Selecting a different speed involves stopping, performing an arcane sequence of taps and bumps to bring up a menu on the display, selecting Speed, choosing a different option, tapping and bumping your way back to the menu, and then proceeding on your way. Wasn't that easy? At least, I think that's the procedure. I wouldn't really know, because banana-slug-speed is still way more than I can safely manage. Although as Patrick at Caregiving Yours pointed out, "Freedom is always fashionable," the additional hardware makes my power chair look even more like a robo-monster than it did before. And, while I'm whining, my neck really hurts!

OK, I admit that one of the less attractive aspects of my personality is that my first response to any new idea, unless of course it's my own, is probably No. I need to keep an open mind. I'll use this contraption until the wheelchair guy comes to reclaim it. I may even get crazy and take it somewhere. You've been warned.

Watch it!