Posts Tagged ‘disease and illness’

Options For Your Wheelchair Back Cushion

Thursday, April 9th, 2009
by Debbie Normski

If you are confined to a wheelchair, regardless of if it is temporary or permanent; you are going to want to make it as enjoyable as possible for you. The best and easiest way to do this is through a custom wheelchair cushion cover. There are many different options for patterns and materials when you look at wheelchair cushion covers, so let us take a look and see what is available to you.

Things You Need To Know Before You Purchase A Foam Wheelchair Cushion

The first thing you need to look at is what the material the cushion is made from. There are basically three types of wheelchair back cushion that you can look at getting. The first is a simply pillow type cushion, normal padding wrapped in some other material.

After that you can also get a memory foam wheelchair back cushion. These will conform to your body shape and stay there. Lastly you can get an air filled back cushion. Depending on your needs and price range any of these types can be viable.

A normal style cushion is good for everyday use when just a little comfort is desired. Not too expensive and not too fancy these wheelchair back cushions will provide you with support and comfort. In addition they usually are easily transportable and can be used on normal chairs in addition to wheelchairs.

My personal favourite seats for manual wheelchairs are the ones from the ROHO Group. These cushions provide superior support and comfort and are very cost effective. Each of their products conforms to a users individual body shape and continuously self adjust with movement.

I would avoid complex and intricate patterns as those may also tend to fade over time. Pretty much after that though the rest is wide open as most manufactures will offer a wide variety of patterns and can probably even do custom work if you need it.

That is all there really is to it, pick your material, pick your pattern then go out and buy your cushion. Hopefully now you have a good idea of what you want to do.

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Home Wheelchair Lifts Are Very Handy

Saturday, April 4th, 2009
by Debbie Normski

You may have seen vehicle wheelchair lifts where a person in a wheelchair can just roll onto a platform and then be lifted up into the car or van with ease. This makes it easier on the person in the wheelchair as well as the driver and it’s especially handy during emergency when time is of the essence.

Just like a forklift lifts crates to a higher level, the vertical wheelchair lift works the same way. The lift has a platform that the person rolls their wheelchair onto. Then, with the push of a button or the flip of a lever, the platform is raised and the person can go through their front door, they can get upstairs and they can even reach things on a high shelf. Anyone who requires a wheelchair to get around should employ the use of a vertical wheelchair lift in their home and their car.

Wheelchair platform lifts are most often used in vehicles, such as vans. When you have a wheelchair platform lift, a wheelchair bound person can easily get in and out of the vehicle without any hassle or discomfort. They make vertical wheelchair lifts that can be installed in your vehicle, essentially modifying the vehicle, and then they have portable ones that can be used only when you need it.

There are also wheelchair platform lifts that can be used to get a wheelchair bound person up and down stairs. These are extremely convenient for the home of someone who requires a wheelchair. Moving up and down the stairs when you’re confined to a wheelchair can be very hard work. With the wheelchair platform lift, a person can effortlessly move about the house, even up and downstairs, with ease.

Inside the home, there are even more uses for the home wheelchair lift. For one, you can rig it so that it will get you up and down stairs so that you don’t have to have anyone help you. Again, you just roll onto the platform and up you go. A setup like that will be quite expensive to set up but it will be very convenient once it’s done.

You can even use your home wheelchair lift to reach high places that you normally wouldn’t be able to get to. You can reach the highest shelf in your house, you can clean the cobwebs off the ceiling and you can even reach hard to get windows just to see the world from a view you’re not used to. The uses for the home wheelchair lift are too numerous to mention but it will make your home life much easier if you are indeed wheelchair bound.

You’ve seen them parking in a handicapped space, then unloading their vehicle wheelchair lift from their vans. These vehicle wheelchair lifts are a simple and easy way to load and unload wheelchair bound people into and out of the car. These can be used with regular as well as motorized wheelchairs and they can be added to any vehicle. Y

You can get a portable vehicle wheelchair lift that you can use in your vehicle only when you really need it. If you are constantly helping someone, or a few people, in wheelchairs in and out of your vehicle, you should definitely think about installing a vehicle wheelchair lift in your vehicle.

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Moving Around in a Lightweight Wheelchair

Friday, March 20th, 2009
by Debbie Normski

It can be very frustrating to us when we become restricted to do things what we have done for many years and worse when we feel dependent on others. Sometimes we get depressed about being helpless and dependent on others. These are some the emotions we go though when we are stuck in a wheelchair.

By trying to use a lightweight wheelchair we can start to look at leading a normal life where it is possible due to the simple fact it’s lightweight and not so heavy as the other wheelchairs we have fewer limitations and hence become a little more independent again.

There are many benefits of lightweight wheelchair over a more traditional manual wheelchair. Of course as the word says lightweight is one of them, typical a lightweight wheelchair can weigh as little as 19lbs and with this we are able to propel ourselves around, lift them into the car and generally man handle them easier compared to other types of wheel chairs.

Lightweight wheelchairs have the advantage that they can still use batteries and as they are so light are ideal for patients or users that are generally weak and find it hard to move them around.

AS the wheelchair is battery operated and improves the users mobility the wheelchair is more for a specialist type of chair, and the wheelchair will give the end user mobility with minimum effort.

Lightweight wheelchairs have been around for a while and this has helped a lot of people who find traditional chairs awkward to handle. If you examine a lightweight wheelchair you will see that they are marked with a K0004 which is a medical marking and will generally cost less than a normal chair would.

Lightweight wheelchairs are cheap compared to others and when choosing your next wheelchair consider its actual function. Compare the accessories that come with the wheelchair as these can greatly help the user in future.

Consider the following points before you purchase:

Most of the lightweight wheelchair weighs 29 to 33 pounds. This is appropriate for moving and for daily use but others can weigh far less.

Most lightweight wheelchairs have changeable back heights, flip-back armrest, seats and quick-release functionality.

Choose a wheelchair with a changeable tire. Do not go for a wheelchair that requires the entire wheel unit to be changed.

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