Saturday, September 5, 2009

Jackson's "new" and improved wheelchair

We got Jackson's chair back Thursday, only to send it off again. Jackson needs his headrest to sit well behind the plane of his body (not sure why, odd shaped head maybe?). The way they had it did not allow it to go any further back and it was maybe only even with his back cushion. So they took it and built up a spacer so it could move back farther.

We got it back again on Friday, only to find that again something was not right. We got a special headrest for Jackson called the HAWC. We got this because he had been able to bring his head forward and then get stuck under his old headrest...not good, especially while I am driving him somewhere by myself and not being able to pull over for a while. We were expecting to also have the swing away mount for the HAWC so we could get him into the chair without removing the headrest and/or the laterals every time but they did not order it. So we have to wait for it and in the meantime getting him in and out is a real PITA!

We took it for a test drive today. I really like it a lot. Jackson was able to sit up relatively upright and remain comfortable. We took a pretty long walk and even though he was pretty upright, he did not drool at all which is pretty amazing.