Page 15 - Mobility Management, April/May 2020

THE FIRST
ULTRALIGHT
By Laurie Watanabe
SO MANY NEW WHEELCHAIR USERS “HATE” THEIR FIRST K0005. CAN THAT BE AVOIDED?
ATP Series
In an educational presentation to ATPs a few years ago, Megan Blunk, a gold-medal-winning member of the U.S. Women’s Basketball Paralympic team, described receiving her first wheel- chair. At 18, she had survived a terrible motorcycle accident and was finishing her stay in a rehab hospital.
Blunk said she wasn’t measured or fit for her new wheelchair, though she was asked what color she wanted. She was also asked what size she wanted. Blunk looked up wheelchairs online and discovered that the “average” wheelchair seat size was 16x16". That’s what she ordered, figuring that the wheelchair would be easy to resell when she no longer needed it.
She did end up keeping that first wheelchair, which, not surprisingly, didn’t fit Blunk well. But she didn’t realize that till she was 19, when she discovered wheelchair basketball and saw the wheelchairs that those athletes used. That’s when, Blunk told the audience of ATPs, she learned that using a wheelchair didn’t have to be painful. That propelling a wheelchair wasn’t supposed to hurt.
After the presentation, several ATPs nodded in acknowledg- ment of how difficult transitioning to a wheelchair typically is. “So many of them hate their first chairs,” one ATP said, as her peers agreed. “That happens for a lot of reasons.”
Listening vs. Assuming
If so many clients like their second or third ultralights more than their first ones, what makes subsequent experiences better?
Todd Richardson, ATP, Eastern Regional Sales Manager for Motion Composites, has used an ultralight for most of his adult life. On leaving rehab after a motocross accident, he got a 16x16" chair with anti-tippers, mag wheels, airless inserts, 8" casters and a 20" back.
It was in stark contrast to Richardson’s athletic lifestyle. With his first chair, Richardson said, “I had gone from feeling agile with great reactions, strong, athletic. That was really kind of defining who I was. And now I was low, square, clunky, awkward, without good balance. I felt sickly.”
He acknowledges being tough on that first chair and breaking multiple casters. During a visit to his dealer to buy a new caster, Richardson met someone with a very different kind of chair.
“Out of the background comes this legendary guy — though
I had no idea — named Marty Ball,” he said. “This was 1988 or 1989. He wheels up — he was repping Küschall at the time — and he said, ‘Have you ever tried a rigid frame?’ I’m sitting here irritated because I’m buying another caster for $85; it’s my fourth one, and insurance isn’t going to pay for it. And I looked at him
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