The prosthetic legs I’m most familiar with are the high tech, robotic-looking, high-functioning type that athletes use (like the one at left, from Otto Bock), so I was interested to see Heather Mills last night in a dancing competition. Ms. Mills, best-known for her entanglement with former Beatle Paul McCartney, lost a leg many years ago in an accident, and is generally photographed wearing a prosthesis designed to look much like her unharmed leg.
OK, I won’t be objective about this. I’ve never used it; have never seen it in use; and have no idea if this particular wheelchair does even half of what the designers claim — or if it performs as well as they claim. But this thing is beautiful — more beautiful than any contemporary exotic car I’ve yet seen on the road. The design, and what it implies of performance, just takes my breath away.
After ploughing my way through the van listings in the entire USA on the Disabled Dealer website, I found an ad for a van in my state that looked right, and made contact with the owners.
It’s tempting to settle for nightgown-type dresses for women when self-dressing isn’t possible, or when buttons or zippers are difficult to manage. Seeking comfort is a laudable goal, but living in pajamas or nighties can be pretty demoralizing, unless you’re choosing to do so as a special treat.
After eliminating local dealers, it took another three weeks to work my way through the used accessible van ads on my local Craigslist. There weren’t a lot of listings on Craigslist during the period when I was looking, maybe no more than six or so, and I probably had contact with the owners — or putative owners — of a total of five vans. Having a long lead time for a search would definitely be an advantage. The pickings at any given time were pretty slim.
Where I live, it’s been right around ten degrees — and windy — for most of this week. Someday the temperature will rise, and it will be OK to be outside for more than a few minutes again. Spring will come, and a lot of people’s thoughts will turn, if not to flights of fancy, then to flight itself. Traveling time will be here again!
Several months after my dad arrived at his nursing home, a new resident showed up. Sharon (not her real name) is a chatty sort — lively and friendly, with an open manner and a helpful heart. She has Alzheimer’s, so conversations with her tend to be circular, and her own contributions often repetitive.
Only one of the vans I saw on Craigslist passed these preliminary screening described in Part 3 of this series of posts. It was an hour’s drive away, and my mechanic told me that I shouldn’t even consider buying it — it was a converted VW Eurovan — but I needed some experience in the actual process of inspecting a van, and took the trip anyway.
The Open Prosthetics Project blog (“Prosthetics Shouldn’t Cost An Arm and A Leg”) apparently hasn’t been updated since October 2006, and it’s a crying shame. OPP hopes to be to prosthetics development what Linux is to Microsoft — an open source design house which requires no licensing fees to build or share prosthetics engineering.
It was time to roll up my sleeves and get down to serious work. Buying an accessible van from a dealer wasn’t going to work for me and my dad, so this meant that I’d have to go elsewhere. It also meant a whole new approach. If I was going to buy from an individual, I needed a lot of information — and some way of screening out potential problems.