Cole credits his assistive technology, especially his wheelchair and his van, for making a “huge difference” in his physical and mental health. Without them, he just wouldn’t get out, “plain and simple … you’re stuck in the house…. You feel like you’re in a prison. You know, you sort of get trapped in a vicious cycle.” Cole says when he was first injured, he found himself sitting in front of the television a lot, missing school and just generally unhappy and unhealthy. With the encouragement of his wife and the aid of assistive technology, Cole now works full-time and lives an active life with his wife in an accessible house that he had custom-built.
As happy as he is with his assistive technology, however, Cole would have done things differently if he had had more information, especially regarding his home and his van. Most important, Cole would have talked to other people in similar situations. When he was first injured, Cole felt shy and uncomfortable with his new situation, so he didn’t approach others for information and advice. Since those early days, Cole and Vicki have found a community counsellor from a local agency for people with spinal cord injuries, and she turned out to be a “wealth of information.”
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Having an accessible home is great, but getting there was a bit of an adventure for a couple of reasons. Cole recalls, “We were young and inexperienced…” And they had to convince the insurance company to pay for some of the things they felt they needed.
Cole and Vicki chose a builder pretty much the way anyone would: they used the builder who had built a lot of homes in their area; they checked his reputation. The builder they chose was willing to modify an existing plan to make the house accessible. Cole notes, “The resale market for a modified home is not very good compared to a regular home.” So Cole and Vicki chose the modifications that best suited them. For example, they had the builder make the doorways and hallways wider and make a cutout under the sink in the bathroom, but they did not want lowered light switches, raised outlets and dropped countertops. Cole explains, “I am six foot four” and have “gorilla arms” to reach things.
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At first, the insurance company was reluctant to pay for a big-ticket item like an elevator. But Cole and Vicki argued that he needed independent access to the basement in case he was home alone and had to change a fuse or fix the furnace.
Their first source of information about elevators was the local telephone book. Vicki recalls, “We looked in the phone book and called the guy, and he said, ‘It’s going to be twenty-six thousand dollars.’ And then we started calling around. Ours is … not a commercial elevator. And it was about eleven thousand.” Then they got the plans and had the builder “pre-build the chute for us,” so that it was there “when it came time to install the elevator. And he [the builder] just boarded off the doors, so we couldn’t … fall down to the basement. I think he charged us an extra five hundred dollars to put in the chute. It wasn’t that much.”
Cole’s main concern with the elevator is that it takes up “a lot of space in the middle of the house.” And he has to enter from a porch lift in the garage. The porch lift also takes up a lot of space in the garage. “It takes up a good corner of our garage, and that limits a lot of things that we can do. We had problems when my wife got a longer car, so we had to take the stairs off the deck in the garage, just so we could fit the car in the garage in the wintertime.” It wasn’t until a year after they finished the house that they discovered they could have had a three-stage elevator—the kind that has doors that open on both sides. It would have stopped at the garage door, the main floor and the basement. Cole explains, “you’d have just a door in the garage instead of a porch lift. Right now you’ve got to have the deck that’s about four and a half, five feet out.”
Another disappointment was the shower stall. The “wheel-in” shower stall in their ensuite bathroom turned out to be a “regular stand-up shower stall [with] a three-inch lip.” So Cole has to shower in the main bathroom. “I transfer over onto a bath bench in the main bathroom. And even that bathroom’s very tight and small. I have to actually back in.” Once again, Cole chalks this problem up to inexperience, both his own and the builder’s.
Cole feels a wheel-in shower is a necessity. Eventually, he wants to install a wheel-in shower like the one he used at his rehab hospital. It has a bath bench bolted to the wall that can fold down. “So basically when you’re finished with it, you push it up and that allows someone else to have their shower, and it provides you the freedom to transfer: bang, done.” Cole prefers this approach to wheeling into the shower on a commode because “a commode’s an extra piece of equipment that I’ve got to have hanging around the house … with my all-terrain chair, my old chair, and my bike downstairs, that takes up a good chunk of space. Throw a commode chair in there and you’re looking to build your own separate room just to store your equipment.” Besides, Cole recalls that he just didn’t like using the commode chair when he was in rehab. The idea of using one at home “went right out the window before I even left the hospital.” The main barrier to getting the shower he wants at the moment is “coming up with the money.”
Cole and Vicki have plenty of suggestions for anyone looking to build an accessible home. First and foremost, “Go out and see other people’s homes and see what people have done. Spend time to research.” They recommend using the local agencies to find others who have built accessible homes. They also recommend consulting accessibility experts if they are available, even though they may be a little expensive. Cole is convinced that he would have found out about the three-stage elevator in time to install one if he had consulted an expert.
Vicki suggests that you find a neighbourhood you like and a builder whose work you like, then have the builder put in the wider halls, the wider doors, “but leave the kitchen and the bathroom up to the experts.” The builder could build the shell at his regular price, but the more specific needs could be subcontracted to people with accessibility expertise. Cole agrees. “You would basically say to a builder when you’re in negotiation with him, this is what I want you to do. Now, I know this is your contract price, but I want you to credit me for the kitchen finishes, or for the bathroom.… It would come down to negotiation.”
Cole feels some of the problems could have been prevented if he could have had access to the house during the building process. He offers a simple solution: build the ramp for the wheelchair early in the process “because when the house is being framed, if you’re able to get in there and look around, you can start to visualize what the home is going to look like … Looking back on it, if I had made the suggestion to the builder to build the ramp first, they would have probably loved that idea because moving equipment in and out on that ramp is great. And the guys who delivered the appliances “just loved this place. Wide halls, three-foot doors … if I had to do it again, that’s one thing I would definitely do.”
Cole also had some problems getting into the house before the driveway was paved. He remembers, “I got stuck in that driveway so many times…. The gravel time was a real pain … but you need to allow the home to shift a little bit before you put the asphalt in.” There was a simple solution, however, “Right near the end we put down plywood … right up the driveway” so that Cole had a path to the house.
Despite these problems, Cole is quick to point that he thinks the builder did an “excellent job” and “built a great house.”
Cole has a love/hate relationship with his van. He says in the same breath, “My van is a godsend. I hate it with a passion.” Cole is grateful to have a van that allows him to get around independently. In fact, he credits his being able to drive and get out with a great improvement in his mood and outlook. “Without my van, without my chair … I’d be stuck in front of the television … I guarantee you I’d be single. I wouldn’t be married anymore.” But he feels he was “talked into” getting a van by an occupational therapist who felt that transferring into a car and having to take his chair apart would strain his shoulders. Again, Cole regrets that he didn’t talk to other people with spinal cord injuries. “Once again, I should have done that. I didn’t. I was too timid to go around to look at people’s things.”
Cole lists a number of problems with the van. It’s expensive to run because it uses a lot of gas. As well, “It’s a big van, and it’s a pain to get around from time to time.” He is glad that he has a rear-post, side-swing lift, which means, “If someone parks within four feet of my vehicle, I can still get into my van and drive away. With your regular lift that drops straight down, you need about five and a half, six feet to … back onto your lift and go up in your lift and then back into your van…. I would highly recommend a side-swing lift to anybody and everybody who’s looking at a van.” Unfortunately, the disadvantage of a side-swing lift is “you need to have a sliding side door. A sliding side door is a bit of a pain because the chains break. I’ve had three chains … jump off the motor. So I’ve been stuck in my van a few times because the chain hasn’t worked properly.”
Another problem with the van is the height of the roof. The type of vehicle he chose could not be modified by dropping the floor. Cole wasn’t keen to do that anyway, because he was worried that cutting into the actual body structure of the vehicle might compromise his safety. Instead, his van has a raised roof to create the extra room he needs for his wheelchair. “The problem is the raised roof now … is just over eight feet. Most parking garages can take a maximum of seven and a half feet—if you’re lucky…. I can’t go a lot of places with it.”
Even though Cole took driving lessons in a car, he still wasn’t aware that he might have been able to handle transferring himself and his chair into the car. Vicki figures that was because “[the occupational therapist] put the chair in the car. She took the chair apart. If Cole had done it, he’d be able to see how easy it was.” It wasn’t until Cole had to rent a car while he was waiting for his van that he realized he could have used a car instead of a van. Cole says his next vehicle will be a sports utility vehicle. “They’re low enough to the ground. They’re an easy transfer over.”
Cole and Vicki were delighted when a local SCI community counsellor was able to get a wheelchair race going in their area. That was where Cole first saw an all-terrain wheelchair and decided he had to have one. Cole uses his all-terrain chair to get around the back yard, to get through the snow and to go the beach. At the beach in his regular chair, “I get about a foot and a half into the sand and I’m stuck. And the water’s about thirty-five feet away. So you sort of either set up shop there, or you try to drag yourself across the sand. At that point, we just said, ‘forget it.’” The all-terrain chair, on the other hand, just flies through the sand at the beach.
The all-terrain chair is too big for indoor use. Cole calls it “the monster truck of wheelchairs.” One reason for this is its big front casters, which “go over everything.” Cole also likes “the solid frame construction where the front bars … come down and move out, so you’ve got a wider wheel-base out at the front.” Another feature that sold him on the chair is the moveable footplate. “You can actually bring that front footplate up so your legs are, are vertical, and you’ve got that clearance under you … so you can go over rocks or over rough terrain.”
Once he had the chair, he “made some minor modifications…. I’m still waiting on some advice on how to move the brakes. At first … my centre of balance was a little bit off, so I found it a little bit tippy. So I just got axle extenders put on it…. Because I’m tall … I have to make it a little bit longer. But I don’t like making it a longer because … if you make the chair longer, that decreases your turning radius. So it was a matter of putting the axle extenders on it, and just moving the wheel back a little bit. And that way I keep that sort of tight package.”
Cole grew up beside a golf course, but he considered himself a lousy golfer. He didn’t really think about golfing from a wheelchair until the local SCI community counsellor called him up “one day out of the blue” and asked him if he would be interested in trying golf. He said he would and then found about an accessible golf course in his area that was designed and run by a person who uses a wheelchair. “He was teaching us the different ways to use the golf club, and introduced me to the stand-up golf cart, which is a single-person golf cart that you’re strapped into. And when you turn to make your shot, the whole seat actually turns to the side and tilts you up a little bit so you’re almost in a standing position and able to get almost full extension on the golf club…. They’re designed to drive straight on and off the greens. They’ve got a wider wheel, their tires are wider, and they have a smoother grip. So they’re actually designed so that the weight is distributed so evenly that you can drive on the green, putt, drive back off the green.” Unfortunately, they cost around seven or eight thousand dollars. Cole says it was interesting experience, but the stand-up cart is too expensive to be an option for him. But he reasons, “if you’re looking to get into golf seriously, they’re worth the money.”
Cole has since played golf a couple of times on a regular course. He plays from his everyday chair, because he finds the all-terrain chair too big and bulky. On one occasion, “We set the course record for 18 holes, three, four and a half, five hours. We took forever. Near the end of the day my arms were getting so tired from transferring in and out of the cart and trying to … hold onto the back of the cart and let [my friend] pull me, which didn’t work too well when you go through soft grass…. I got a mouthful of it after I fell. So near the end of the day, I guess on hole 17 and 18, I just had a friend tee off for me and putt for me. And we hooked up the chair to the back of the cart and I basically played polo. I would grab the seat and I would swing from out of the cart. And I actually played the best two holes.” Cole’s attitude toward golf is that “it’s not about competition, it’s about enjoyment,” even though there is usually a lot of swearing.
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Cole also enjoys sledge hockey. He didn’t find out about a sledge hockey league in a nearby town until one of Vicki’s coworkers mentioned that her son plays. “He’s able-bodied, but he plays on the sledge hockey team because one of his friends has a disability.” Once again, the equipment is expensive, but the team was able to raise funds to buy the equipment for the team. “You can only get them from Ottawa. There’s a web site that you can go to, but if you don’t know about it you’re not going to find the web site.” Unfortunately, the team is still limited by the number of sledges it has.
Cole had to adapt his equipment because he’s so big. Vicki says, “So he took it into his work, and the guys there made it bigger.” Cole tells the story: “Our road superintendent, his father-in-law is a welder, so he was able to do this for me…. He’s big into hockey, and he was so impressed that I was actually going out and playing hockey. He actually had this thing welded for me at no charge because he’s interested in … seeing people into hockey. So he was more than willing to help out…”
Cole wishes there was more awareness about sports for people with disabilities in his city and about the everyday challenges for people with disabilities. “When you come … out of any major centre, the disabled population decreases significantly. And when that decreases significantly, so does the awareness.”
Vicki remarks, “In the four years that we’ve been here he didn’t know that there was hockey just 15 minutes down the road.” Cole called all his friends to let them know that there is sledge hockey nearby, but he thinks there should be an awareness program about sports for people with disabilities so that people would know “that there are these different sports that people get involved using adaptive equipment—bowling or tennis, or skiing or anything you need.” But he is optimistic that this will change with greater awareness. He uses the wheelchair race as one example of how to raise awareness. Cole laughs when he describes the race. “It puts ordinary people like my wife in a wheelchair and makes them go around the track.” He hopes that, with that experience, “people will … start thinking about things a little bit more. You know, I’ve done this race. I own a store. Well, how would I get in here in a wheelchair? Maybe I can’t. Maybe I’ll put a ramp up.”
Cole keeps coming back to the importance of talking to others. “Go over and take a look at someone’s place, and see what they’ve done and talk to them … even if you’re a little bit uncomfortable. Because I know, right now, … I’d be more than willing to have [someone who had a disability] come over and take a look at our house.” He says the same thing about vehicles. He recalls that when he bought his van, “I just didn’t listen to anybody, because I was listening to a professional. And I thought this professional should know what’s best for me…. But that’s not the case…. Each person is individual. Each person is different. So my advice is get an opinion from a professional. But ultimately get what you want. Get what you think you are functionally capable of handling…. You find that out … by trial and error.”
Regarding sports, Cole recognizes that it is often difficult for people in wheelchairs to take up sports because of the expense or unavailability of the equipment. “It’s not like being an able-bodied person where if I want to try golf, I’d grab a couple of golf clubs and go out and golf…. Or I want to try hockey, I borrow a buddy’s pair of skates and, and off I go. These are … actual pieces of equipment that … you’ve got to order…. You’ve got to fork out the thousands of dollars of cash first.” Just the same, he advises that people try to get their hands on the equipment and give the sport a try before they invest a lot of money in equipment wherever possible. For example, Cole was able to try out a hand cycle before he bought it. But he acknowledges, “With specialized sports like [sledge hockey] it would be … impractical for a supplier to stock a sled, because the sleds are made for certain people and they’re made different sizes. It’s impractical to stock something like that and loan it out. But it would be a good idea, because it would give people the ability to borrow a piece of equipment.” Cole tried skiing once and injured himself, so he won’t be doing that again. “If I purchased a sit-ski up front, that would be a nine thousand dollar piece of equipment that would be sitting there collecting dust.”
Cole’s ultimate piece of advice for wheelchair users is, “Get out and challenge life. You know what? It’s not a perfect world; it’s not going to be a perfect world, but get out there, challenge it and try new things.”
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