WHEELCHAIR NUMBER 10 (Blog dated 26th November 2019)

Hello everyone!!
I am super excited for Vin today, I mean ever since his 10th wheelchair arrived yesterday 😁

I had my eyes on this one for quite a while ever since I discovered it on https://www.wheelchairindia.com/Folding-Power-Wheelchair

I had been on the lookout for a power cum manual wheelchair with thick polyurethane tyres ever since we encountered the cobbled streets of Italy and most of Europe.

1) Let's talk about the choice of tyres first.
So the new rubberized wheels of folding, manual wheelchair number 9 started getting worn off within the first 3 days of our trip in Europe in 2017. It was kind of worrying and intimidating and we were extra cautious with his wheelchair henceforth as without his wheels, Vineet would be severely handicapped. And we too...
Hence the choice of thick polyurethane tyres for travel

2) Next let's talk about the choice of manual cum power wheelchair.
So last time with the manual wheelchair, it was quite exhausting for Papa to push Vineet all the time as the folding wheelchair had very high hand rests and impossible for Vineet to push himself manually. Hence the choice of a power wheelchair which would also work manually, in case the motor got defective😬😬 In the website video, a person without disability was able to use this wheelchair manually as well without any problem.However , when Vineet tried it on yesterday, the hand rests seem a bit high and we have yet to try out with Vineet on a seat cushion if his hands reach the wheel rims..

3) Next we shall talk about the folding aspect.
Although Vineet's wheelchair number 8 (Karma KP 10.3 ) is also a power wheelchair, it is not easily foldable . We have to remove the battery, then fold the other parts as well .This new chair weighs 42 kgs which is actually heavier than wheelchair no 8 which weighs 37.5 kgs, but we needn't remove the batteries. Just 2 folds and it's ready to be tucked into the car's boot. So we can now go for a picnic and Vineet can enjoy on his own!! 😃

Karma wheelchairs are made in Taiwan and assembled locally so I'm told. But this wheelchair is not branded and has been directly imported from China I guess, which is why the costing too has come down to half of wheelchair number 8. And that counts. The cost. While searching for this particular type of wheelchair I stumbled upon the website alibaba.com which is the gateway to Chinese products directly from the mainland. Anyone who has visited this website will know how ridiculously cheap the stuff there are. Of course it's a wholesale market and there are MOQs (minimum order quantity). But if you order a sample piece, the price gets doubled with airshipping. And even then, it stands cheaper than on Amazon or any other similar online shopping site. I could more on this with examples, but this post will become too long. 😛☹️So basically , this was a good deal for us, as when you have a person with special needs in your home, expenses touch the sky...But God has been good to us and we are ever grateful that we can afford to buy stuff that Vineet needs all the time. My heart goes out to those parents or children who's special needs are not fulfilled...
Friends, if you support any kind of cause from your hard earned money, do give a thought to children and adults with #specialneeds . #AssistiveDevices can be ridiculously expensive for most...

And a word for those who work for changes in society for a good cause, kindly do something to bring down costs of assistive devices. Thanks🙏

And Finally, The part I LOVE the most!!
When this wheelchair moves back, it has a beep warning sound . This is very very necessary in all wheelchairs. It is dangerous for people standing behind a wheelchair if it suddenly starts to move back. Of course there is a beep horn for front on the joystick pad as well.

So here's hoping that this wheelchair comes in handy for us as we love to travel,but we don't get a chance easily😒. Lots of things to think about and loads of planning is exhausting!! 😣 But then, we might as well make the most of it while we are still able to! 😊 

Vineet, Math and Academics

This is an important post which I had started drafting some time back. But I have to respect Vineet's wishes and not relate this topic entirely to his situation. So this is going to be a general topic mostly and I hope it helps you who are having similar situations, especially people in Eastern India.

So, as the story goes, Vineet was doing mediocre in his mainstream  school until middle school. Only when he went to high school did we realise that his handwriting had turned illegible and he was also having problems with arithmetic part of mathematics. I now understand that both are problems related to spina bifida. I was supposed to take him to "Manovikas Kendra "  in Kolkata for his evaluation, but unfortunately we couldn't do it for time constraints  (which is a bad excuse I guess...) :/

Fast forward to today. Vineet is going to appear for his class 10 board exams from Monday, and he has gotten himself a writer. Math is still a problem but he is concentrating on the algebra and has worked hard on arithmetic too. Geometry is still a problem though...

So here's a small request for you dear friends, kindly keep Vineet in your prayers as he goes for his board exams from Monday. It will go on for a month till 28th March. Please pray that he may get back his self confidence with the results later this year....

Thankyou so much!

Standing Power Wheelchair

In seated Position

In standing Position

A standing wheelchair is the dream of most paraplegics I could say. And ever since I showed it to Vineet on youtube he had been eager to experience it. For him , as he said, it would be the first time he would stand on his own.

In my post about his power wheelchair I had mentioned that our Surgico-pharma shop had conveyed that the standing power wheelchair would be available for demo soon. So on 11th July 2015 , we visited the shop and indeed, there it was! We were as excited as Vineet to try it. Maybe a little apprehensive too, thinking what if the knee support wasn't strong enough to hold him? Or what if the knee support was too tight on him and he wouldn't know if the pressure was crushing him? Nevertheless, Vineet sat on the wheelchair and slowly he began to rise up from his seating position. And then it struck us all - The huge bony deformity of his 'Lordosis" wouldn't let him rest on his back on the back seat. So as much as my brave Vin tried, he kept falling in front. Daddy was very worried about the knees too....And our demo personnel decided that the model being an adult size did not help much either. So after taking a foto of Vin in it (which he wanted to put up on his FB page :) , we switched it back to the sitting position.

 Our dealer has assured us that he will be on the lookout for a 'Paediatric ' model for Vin. So we came back home a little  disheartened, but our motto in life being - "NEVER SAY DIE", we will still be looking into it. ...... Maybe we'll get ourselves a neat Paediatric model into which I shall get a cutout for the back part and get an elastic cover with a cushion. ..... Or maybe they'll make a model where you can rest forward and not backwards........ The options are endless and our hopes and dreams will lead us to them..... :)

Here is the link to the official video of the product from Ottobock - Its beautiful!
https://youtu.be/uGwHwPx3qsI



THANKS TO ALL WHO ARE GOING THROUGH OUR JOURNEY WITH VINEET !
God bless you! 

Vineet's First Power Wheelchair!!!

WHEELCHAIR  NUMBER  8

I had my eyes on the Power wheelchair for Vin long enough now and was under the impression that it would cost us the moon. So I told myself to wait for some more time till Vin really needed it. And one fine day when I was going through some local companies for it, I stumbled upon the official site of 'KARMA' wheelchairs in India and was pleasantly surprised to find a decent model that cost only Rupees Ninety Thousand!( Fourteen hundred dollars approx). It was even amazing that there was a dealer right in our small town!! We spoke to them for a demo which they readily agreed for and we took Vin to the shop. He was just as excited as we were coz he was getting a little tired of 'being pushed around'!! hahaha! And he's too lazy to push himself except when he's on his fav wheelchair at home.

We came back home and pretended to Vin that we would not be buying it - it was way too expensive! :P We planned to surprise him on Valentine's Day which was just after a few days and he's 'Our Valentine' of course :) So on Valentine's Day 2015 we surprised him in the evening with his new Power chair and he was overjoyed! I took some snaps and few videos too, but by mistake they got deleted from my phone :( A few that got saved which I uploaded to FB are here in the links - Have a look and BE HAPPY!!!! Share our small and big joys! Thankyou!

The link to a small video on the first day! --

Click here to see a small video of Vineet in his new power wheelchair