THE EXPLODING WHEELCHAIR

My husband’s wheelchair explodid the other day, well it happened on Tuesday. He was driving it in the living room, and our cleaner, Magda was in there too tidying up, asking him where to put things. He had parked up and turned it off, as you do, and she asked him to move so that she could get in somewhere so he turned the wheelchair on again and oh boy. All the lights on it started flashing and it wouldn’t move anywhere. Panic stations. Magda went and got him my old electric wheelchair and helped him into it. What a good job she was here. He rang up Eden Mobility where he purchased the wheelchair at the end end of December last year and they refused to come until next Monday. He was stuck with a dead wheelchair in the room, and fear of fire. We thought it had a lithium battery in it and so were worried sick about fire and power was still going into the motor. My husband rang round lots of people asking them if it was a fire risk. He even rang the fire station to ask what to do. They said that they would only comes when it catches fire. Social services wouldn’t help him to get the battery off the wheelchair and no one else would come either. We were terrified as it was sitting in the living room below this bedroom where I am. In the end someone called Peter agreed to come. I used to play my flute in a group with Peter. He is not a very practical person. He can manage a guitar but not much else lol. However, he did manage to get the offending battery out and he took it outside, wrapped in a plastic bag.

All of yesterday we were on the phone to various people trying to get something done. My husband cannot manage without that wheelchair as it is a riser one that lifts him up to the height of the work surface in the kitchen. He is cooking for us both all of the time and also he has to provide me with red meat as my iron tablets have been cut down. Panic again. Despite many desperate phone calls to Eden Mobility they still said that no one could come until next Monday. They had no engineers in. We were stuck.

The situation now is still that he can only use my old electric wheelchair. We had to get sandwiches in from Tescos but that wasn’t very filling and no iron in them.

So we are stuck now until next MOnday and even then it may take a while to repair it depending on what is wrong with it.

Last year he had bought the exact same wheelchair in about June. It had done excactly the same as this one. It needed the motor replacing. It was ging to take a long time to get the new motor and fit it. This was in December. We couldn’t get through Christmas and were desperate so he gave that wheelcahir in part exchange for another new one. We lost a lot of money but we were desperate. And now this one has done exactly the same thing as the first one. We don’t know if it is the motor again or not.

So, my friends, I was not on my blog all day again yesterday.

I’ll let you know if the wheelchair explodes any more.