Although it was about 20 years ago, Joe can still remember: “Even when I was in the hospital, I was wondering then how I was going to miss my hunting and fishing I used to always love.” Over the years, he has used his ingenuity and his network of family and friends to acquire the technology he needs to continue to do the things he loves to do. He bought a number of second-hand devices, such as his van, which might have otherwise been unaffordable. Having skilled tradesmen in the family also helps. Joe has brothers skilled in carpentry, machining and mechanics. They custom-build items for him, adapt items for him and help him keep his wheelchairs going.
Joe has the basics for getting around and for his personal care. He uses a manual wheelchair, a modified van, a shower chair and a cut out under his bathroom sink. His creative use of technology is geared to his favourite leisure activities such as hunting and fishing in the rural area where he lives. He also likes to exercise and stay fit, which he is better able to do with his latest acquisition, a hand cycle.
Go directly to:
Video:
|
Joe fishes from his wheelchair in his boat. He uses a lift to get in and out of his boat but he doesn’t have to adapt his fishing equipment in any way. Joe’s method for getting into the boat has evolved. At first, his cousin would lift him into the boat. Eventually his cousin found that Joe was “getting kind of heavy.” So he started to use a ramp to get into the boat, before putting the boat in the water. He found he was “tripping over the gas tank” on the inside of the boat, so his brothers built a floor over it. He remembers that even with the ramps, it was “a lot of trouble for them to get me in and out.”
Finally, Joe’s cousin, with the help of his brothers, designed a lift that was inspired by one used to take pontoon boats out of the water. The mechanism is a hand-cranked winch, anchored to the boat trailer. Joe sits on a small cushion that is attached to the lift with Velcro. He explains, “As you use the boat winch to crank it, it just picks me up, and I just throw my feet in and I slide into my boat.” Someone puts the cushion back into his chair and puts his chair into the boat for him. Then Joe backs the boat off the trailer into the water and drives it around to pick everyone else up from the dock. Joe can transfer to the driver’s seat and drive it himself if he chooses, though he often lets the others drive so he can concentrate on fishing.
Joe also has a trout pond on his family’s property, which was inspired by a visit to a fish farm. Joe has tried various kinds of ramps to get access to the pond. The first one was built of wood and lasted only a few years. They put tin on the second one to make it last longer, but “every time you walked on it, it would make noise” and scare away the fish. Finally, when Joe was able to procure a free porch lift for the house, he and his father moved his old magnesium ramp from the house to the pond so he could get to the water.
Soon after he was discharged from rehab, Joe’s cousin took him to look at all-terrain vehicles (ATV) so they could get into the bush for hunting. They found a second-hand one that allowed Joe to drive into the bush, through water and over the snow. Joe can transfer into the ATV himself but, he gets help to load it onto the trailer which he uses to transport it to the hunting site. He had no trouble learning the hand controls. He says they remind him of the controls on a bulldozer. Joe’s hunting companions like his all-terrain vehicle too. One time they used it to haul a moose they had shot out the swamp, instead of having to carry it out on their backs.
With his all-terrain vehicle, Joe has a certain amount of independence when he goes hunting. He takes a walkie-talkie or a cell phone with him for security. Even though they have cell phone service in his area now, it only works “up to a point” in the bush where he hunts. The walkie-talkie system has its problems too. Joe recalls, “I got stuck one time and the other guy left the walkie-talkie at the car, so I could talk all I wanted to; I wasn’t going to hear anybody.”
Joe used to go hunting with a crossbow from his wheelchair. He didn’t modify the crossbow; he just changed the way he used it. Normally, you load a crossbow with a special loader that involves using your feet. Since Joe can’t use his feet, he loads against his chest. He explains that a crossbow has a “hundred and fifty pound pull-back,” so Joe puts a sponge or foam on his chest, then he puts the butt of the rifle on the sponge to cushion his chest from the pressure of pulling on the strings while loading the crossbow. In this way, he compensates for not having the use of his feet.
One time Joe was hunting with a friend who had a three-wheeler that they used to get to the top of a large hill. Joe remembers, “And we went up on this mountain and then he dropped me off, put me in my wheelchair, and gave me my bow and that. And then he went on farther. So I was just sitting there on the hill … and these people come walking up and they’re looking up on the hill and they see this guy in a wheelchair. And they’re scratching their head—how did he get up there?”
For less adventurous outings, Joe recently purchased a three-wheeled hand cycle with fourteen gears similar to those on a mountain bike. Joe felt he didn’t need a racing bike, so the height of his hand cycle is “almost like a normal chair.” He had seen pictures of them in books and magazines, so he approached a local wheelchair vendor about getting one. His vendor was a little slow off the mark in helping Joe, so he went through a different vendor and actually got a better price in the process.
Although Joe’s main purpose in getting a hand cycle was to “get back into shape,” he finds it is also much easier to use to get around on the roads where he lives than his wheelchair. And he points out, you can only go so fast with a wheelchair. “The little wheels, they start to wobble so, then I have slow down on the hills.” With his hand cycle, Joe has gone as fast as 27 miles an hour and was able to ride for 10 miles in a single outing. He also likes the fact that when he uses his hand cycle to go down the road, he can see everything. He says that when he went around a “country block” on his wheelchair, it took him an hour and fifteen minutes. He can do the same country block in about a half an hour with the bike. He finds it is even good if it’s hot out because the wind blowing in his face keeps him cool—until he stops, of course. He also likes the positive attention he attracts with his hand cycle. Other cyclists have stopped to talk to him and admire his bike when he is out on the road.
The wheels on the hand cycle are angled inward (cambered) more than those on his regular chair to improve manoeuvrability and speed. Unfortunately, Joe finds that his pants are always touching the wheels, which makes him wish he had bought one that was just a little wider. The vendor offered to adjust the camber for him, but Joe bought the hand cycle primarily for exercise, so he is hoping to lose a little weight and take care of the problem that way. Another limitation of the hand cycle is that he finds he can’t really use it on loose gravel or steep hills because in the low gears, “it’ll just spin.” He adds, “But I’ve learned a few tricks on it. Like going up some hills where it spins, I let the front steering go and I use my back wheels like a wheelchair and it’ll go up.” He is also considering moving the seat forward a bit to make it easier to go up hills. Just the same, it is still easier to negotiate hills on the hand cycle than it is with a wheelchair. Joe developed tendonitis in his shoulders from going around the hills in his wheelchair. He successfully treated it and feels he will avoid a recurrence because of the hand cycle. Joe wishes that he had had one when he first came home from hospital years ago because it is so good for exercise, but they weren’t available at that time.
For strengthening and to prevent the recurrence of his shoulder tendonitis, Joe lifts weights and does resistance training. His chiropractor advised him to get “a spring or something” for resistance training, but Joe found a homemade solution by tying an inner tube to the leg of his desk. He grabs it by one end, pulls it toward him and lets it go gradually.
Joe has access to a garage where he keeps saws and other woodworking tools. He says that setting up his shop is a work in progress. He needs the help of his father and brothers to set things up so that everything is “handier.” He says he can actually reach everything, but it’s more a question of organization to make it a workable shop. “But it’s coming slowly,” he adds. Joe cuts the wood in the garage, but he does his carving and wood burning at his desk in his room. He has an exhaust fan for the fumes, and he does a little bit at a time. Wood-burning projects can take as long as seventeen or eighteen hours to complete. Then he sells his work in craft stores.
Joe lives in his parents’ home, where they have made minimal modifications. Joe says, “They widened the hallways.” To reach things high up, he uses a reacher that he calls his “grabber.”
At first, Joe didn’t really want a porch lift because he felt he needed the exercise of going up and down the ramp into his home. Then he was able to get one for free from a neighbour who no longer needed it for one of his family members. Now that he has one, he says, “If I want exercise I can lift weights or go on the road.” He likes the fact that he is out the door without having to negotiate 30 to 40 feet of ramp. His mother also prefers the lift because she felt the ramp was an “eyesore.” The only drawback is “if the power ever goes off, well then I have to either sit outside or get my brothers to hook up the generator and put it up like that.” For that reason, Joe would eventually like to have a ramp to another door as a back up.
Joe has tried a number of beds over the years. He says, “I had waterbeds, all the different stuff.” He has settled on an electric, adjustable bed. “It can lift my feet up if they’re swelling. [It can lift] my head up. I’ve got a massager in there.” To make things really comfortable, Joe asked his brother to make him a set of bedside tables that are attached to the headboard so that he can reach his books or his drinks easily. Joe says, “Then I told him I wanted it so that I can make the bed and I can clean it up. So I made him cut the bottom so that I can go in close with the wheelchair, eh.”
Joe gave up on his shower chair. He says, “I started out doing that [transferring to a chair], but now I got a jet tub and I always have a sore back,” so he prefers to transfer right into the tub and have a bath. He explains his set up and his technique: “I have a seat at the back of the tub where I transfer. I put my feet into the bathtub first then I transfer onto the seat [at the back of the tub], I grab hold of the side, and then the side of the wall, and then I just slide down into the tub.” Joe adds that he transfers out while there is still water in the tub because we feel lighter in water “so it’s easier to transfer and I just slide back up onto the seat, and by the time I dry myself off, the water’s out of the tub and I throw my feet over and into my chair there.”
Although Joe’s wheelchair is only three years old, he is having problems with it. There is something wrong with the shock absorbers that even his brother can’t fix without new parts. Unfortunately, the company that made the chair no longer makes this particular one. That means he has a long wait for parts. So Joe is using one of his old chairs for the time being.
When he bought his new chair, the wheelchair vendor brought a few chairs for Joe to try out for a week at a time. Now he is wishing that he had chosen one of the other ones he tried, the one that had the “better shock system…. So I’ll do it next time, buy a better one.”
Another regret that Joe has about his current chair is that it has “these little, wee racing tires and they don’t have them in winter tires, so you slip and slide.” This is another time that Joe is happy that he kept his old equipment. He says, “I kept some of the old tires, … and it’s just push button, they fit on that chair…. But one guy was telling me that you can get winter tires with the small one. So I have [my vendor] looking to see if they can get them.”
With his network of family and friends, Joe was able to find a second-hand van to suit his needs. In fact, the van came to him. Joe received a call about a van that he was able to purchase already modified, for what he figured was a pretty good price. He says, “I bought it for eight grand and then … I put about four thousand for a body job, so about five thousand dollars to fix it up.” Of course, because it’s a second-hand van, “there’s a lot of miles on it, almost two hundred and seventy-seven thousand.” But Joe finds that it meets his needs.
Like many people who have spinal cord injuries, Joe has to be creative to acquire and maintain all the equipment he needs without going broke. With so much mechanical skill close at hand, Joe says he finds it handy to “keep all my old stuff.” This habit, combined with his willingness to share what he has on hand, helps Joe maintains his good networks and friendships. He was able to lend one of his old chairs to someone who needed a wheelchair temporarily and to give some parts to another friend. His network, in turn, helps him find affordable equipment that allows him to stay active and do the things he loves. He figures he got his porch lift for free “just for being a good friend…. I just do little favours for them, they do for me.”
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
Home © 1999 - 2010 All Rights Reserved |
