[Blind-Rollers] Manual Wheelchairs and Cane Use

Tue Jun 4 00:01:51 UTC 2024

Hello Ellana, I have been in this manual chair for three years steadily. I use my feet to work the chair in my home. My arms keep me from bumping badly and keep my direction. I turn with my arms on the big wheels. I think that is the key you are missing outdoors. You can get some turn with your feet and one arm pushing the wheels, but to really turn you need both arms outdoors and indoors for that matter. Like I said you can get some turn using your foot. For a left turn using your feet and one arm. The right foot goes back and to an angle. Your heal is nearly at the right wheels holding fairly still, while, then the right foot joins in the push left. Reverse for aright turn.  the left foot is pointing  and pushing you left. Sometimes depending on the surface you will have to really push with the left heal. 

Have you tried the smart drive power assist. You must try it and not let others talk you into anything. I have a power assist and it is hard to use. I am not sure yours will be like mine. With my power assist they do not want you to use your feet, growl. The first thing I don't like. But ok moving forward. I come out straight through my front door and turn left to go to my gate to leave the deck. The wheels do not turn right away. I go straight another eight feet then turn I miss the gate I need by at least six feet. Ok, fine, I can adjust. My left hand is on the joy stick and my right hand has a five foot long cane. Out the gate I go and I look for my next cue. I have a garden on the right and a fence on my left. The fence stops and I have a wide driveway off to my left and straight ahead. The next thing I am looking for to go down my driveway is a planter. Checking my front wheels they are almost straight. They are pointing slightly right and so goes my chair into the garden again. I turn the wheels slightly left to pick up the planter about fifteen feet slightly to my left. I kick both front wheels so they are slightly left and travel that way picking to my great delight the planter with my cane. I need to angle so the planter is to my left, and of course the wheels are doing something I don't want them to do. So again I kick them to go slightly right for the planter to be on my left. Then I go and travel, as soon as I get the dam wheels straight down my driveway, and of course my driveway dips right so there go the wheels. I kick them left and shoreline down, well sort of down the driveway to the bus.  I am exhausted.   

With mine I do not get a crisper turn from the joy stick, and that is why I, anyway, have to kick those front tires of my wheelchair. I hope a power chair has a crisper turn so I really know where I am. 

It is a whole lot less frustrating for me to just use the manual chair in my travels. I miss taking a walk just because. It is exhausting to just take a walk. But what an amazing feeling of accomplishment to take that short walk in my manual chair, smile.

Would anyone like to buy the power assist. I have a barely used battery and two big tires, battery charger that you can take on an airplane, smile. I don't know if you can even get the airplane approved battery any more.  I have one, and all the manuals.

Anyway, the left turn I described has more detail then what I wrote.

I am right here for you. 
Becky 

-----Original Message-----
From: Blind-Rollers <blind-rollers-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Ellana Crew via Blind-Rollers
Sent: Monday, June 3, 2024 1:55 PM
To: blind-rollers at nfbnet.org
Cc: Ellana Crew <eemcrew at gmail.com>
Subject: [Blind-Rollers] Manual Wheelchairs and Cane Use

Good afternoon everyone,

It seems as though this list has been dormant for a while so I’m not too sure if I’ll get any responses, but I wanted to reach out here just in case there were still a few folks keeping an eye on it here and there.

I have just started using a wheelchair around a year ago due to severe dysautonomia, and I am looking for tips on using a manual wheelchair with a white cane at the same time. While I do have some residual vision, I do need my white cane full-time outside of the house, so relying on residual vision  in familiar places is not an option for me most of the time. I have been using a manual wheelchair throughout this time, initially a too big hospital wheelchair but currently have a custom built lightweight chair on the way as we speak. I would much prefer to keep using a manual wheelchair rather than a power chair for a variety of reasons if at all possible, so at the moment I’m not looking for suggestions on switching to a power chair.

Because I still have at least partial use of my legs, I have mostly been scraping by in my current wheelchair by foot propelling. This has certainly made it easy from a white cane standpoint since I can use my left hand to aid myself in pushing and my right hand is always free to use my cane relatively as I did when walking and using other mobility aids, but it is much more tiring than using my arms. I have just gotten approval for a smart drive power assist attachment, which will certainly make a big difference, but my biggest struggle has been learning how to steer without my feet involved so much.

For those of you who do not foot propel, as I know I am probably in the minority for doing so, what techniques have you found to use your white cane and a manual wheelchair at the same time? I have read articles here and there of folks holding their push rim and their cane handle in the same hand by splitting up their fingers between the two, But I have not yet figured out how to make this work myself and have not seen anyone go into very much detail on how it works. I’ve also met some folks online who sweep the cane in between pushes, but have also not yet gotten a feel for how this  Works in my own hands or any very detailed explanations.

Does anyone happen to have more detailed tips on how to make these strategies work, or alternative strategies I haven’t found yet? Any amount of information you could provide would be very helpful. I am making do with my current set up and I suspect I may never fully get away from using my feet to help me  steer and turn at the very least, but I would like to become less dependent on that method if possible and get better at relying on my arms, which have a much easier time of it than my legs do.  Tips for turning in particular would be especially useful, since the smart drive will at least help me significantly with forward momentum in a straight line.

Thanks,
Ellana
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