Waspish Wednesday: Now, with Real Wasps!

Betsy got stung by a wasp today as she was dealing with one of our four composting nightmares. As she was sitting on the floor with a bag of frozen peas on her ankle, she said, “You should write a Waspish Wednesday about this!”

After I thought about it I realized she was right, it is Wednesday! I have other topics I’ve been wanting to write on, not least my post for the Assistance Dog Blog Carnival, if I can get it done in time. Meanwhile, though, what have I been up to?

Powerchair hell, as usual. A few weeks ago, I asked the people who built my big purple chair if I could please exchange it for a new chair or just return it for a refund, inasmuch as it is a lemon. They responded that they would completely change all the wiring and the wheel motors.

I thought about it. I knew I didn’t want that, because they’d already rewired it, and I’m convinced the wheel motors are not the issue. But I was trying to decide if I wanted to ask for a new chair or just a refund. I looked up the Massachusetts wheelchair lemon law and discovered that it is up to me, the consumer, as to whether I want an exchange or a refund.

I wrote them, referred them to the law (which is online; most states have wheelchair lemon laws), and told them I wanted a refund. They responded by yelling at me a few times. I basically said, “Can’t we please just settle this? I’m not asking for reimbursement for mileage for the many long trips. I just want a refund. I’ll return the chair.” But no, I kept getting emails saying it was my fault for using it in mud, snow, and rain, which is mostly not true, and also beside the point, as the advertisements for this chair and the conversations I had with them said it’s great to use it in snow, etc.

For the last few days I have been contacting the Better Business Bureau — who told me to file a complaint, but who have no teeth — and the Consumer Protection Office, who told me to file a complaint, and may or may not have teeth, and the Attorney General’s office, who told me to file a complaint, and who — I think — do have some sort of teeth. This is just exactly how I wanted to spend my summer. Sitting inside, reading websites, making phone calls, and doing paperwork for a chair that has caused me pretty much nonstop stress and trouble.

Right now I’m in the middle of writing a “Letter of Demand,” which the AG and the Consumer Protection office told me to write. I’ve got my calendar and all my old emails to refer to to help my sometimes rusty memory. In this letter, I demand he comply with the various applicable consumer protection laws, and then say that if he doesn’t, he could be facing big, nasty, mean court charges. It’s just a thrill, and I know he’ll be totally cooperative and reasonable once he gets it.

Meanwhile, I decided to see if I could resurrect my old pchair, my Jet 3 Ultra, which was a pretty decent machine in its prime. Betsy and I took it all apart, as this picture attests.

Actually, we'd already put the base back together when I thought to take pictures. We took it apart a lot more than this.

It turned out we didn’t need to take it apart as much as we did. We discovered this when Betsy suggested I find and read the manual and see if it tells us how to change the batteries, which it did. However, I’m not sorry we took it apart, because I learned about what’s inside and where and how to make all sorts of adjustments. It also gave us a chance to vacuum out a lot of debris and remove dust and dirt — which always harbors mold.

We adjusted the seating, which had always been too low for my long legs — raising the seat and then moving it back so my feet rested on the foot-plate like they were supposed to. (The original vendor should have done this, but he just dropped it off and left. That’s a story for another time.) Then, we had to move where the controller box (joystick) was sitting, so that would be in the right place, too. Betsy did a lot of heavy lifting; it was quite a job, but now I finally have two chairs with proper seating.

We tried taking out the almost entirely dead batteries and replacing them with some others I had lying around. Usually if you don’t charge batteries they die completely, but I thought that since the others were very-nearly dead, these others couldn’t be much worse. I was wrong. They are completely dead, and now the chair doesn’t go at all. It won’t even charge. However, it looks fabulous.

Voila!

I even figured out a problem that had stumped me for years, which was how to make my elevated leg rests from my new indoor chair fit with it. I figured out how to remove some thingies that had been blocking the  rails. I also took the seat belts off my useless purple chair and put them on this chair. (Which is where they were originally from.) With the addition of seat belts and extended leg rests, it will be safer, more stable, and less tiring for me to use for extended periods, such as for walking my dog! Behold! . . .

Now I'm ready for action! (Sorta.)

I have been posting on a powerchair forum called Wheelchair Junkie, which is basically a bulletin board for power mobility gearheads. The folks there have given me a lot of helpful advice. I decided to get cheap replacement batteries for the Jet, just so I have a working backup chair and one that I can use with my existing van lift — so I can go to doctor’s appointments and take Barnum for working field trips to parking lots and stores and such. And, I will see how this chair does in the rough-and-tumble of my rural setting. Hopefully, it will be good enough until I get something with more power, clearance, stability, and speed. (I’ll talk more about ideas for that another time.)

I ordered my batteries from Amazon, the same brand and type that had been in there before. They arrived within three days, and I couldn’t wait to install them and see if the chair was viable! After all Betsy’s and my hard work, I was very excited.

I took out the old batteries, put in one of the new ones, started to connect the wires to the terminals, and then decided I should put the other one in, too, before I connected the wires. So, I took the second one out of the box, and . . .

Augh! The terminal was bent!

I emailed the seller and asked them to send me a new one with expedited shipping and take back this damaged one for no shipping charges (because each battery weighs 23 pounds, so shipping can be pricey!). I didn’t hear back from them. The next day, I emailed them again and asked for their shipping return address and an expedited exchange. No response. Today I sent the battery back, and the shipping charges came to almost as much as the cost of the battery itself! I wrote to them for a third time, told them the battery was on the way, and asked for them to defray the shipping costs and send a new battery. I also said I was “very unhappy with your customer service.” I hoped that would get their attention, since they get feedback scores from customers.

Surprise! Very shortly after that, an actual human from the company emailed me and said they were expediting my refund, but that my shipping charges were too high for them to cover. I don’t know what will happen in the end, because we’re still discussing it. Meanwhile, I ordered a replacement battery. I hope it arrives in perfect condition!

I want to get out of my frickin’ house! AUGH!

My theory is that I was in a wheelchair karma-accident in my former life. The only positive out of the battery disappointment was that when I tried to stand up from the ground and needed assistance, Barnum did a terrific job of bracing me. He is super solid on that skill. He stands nice and square and doesn’t move a muscle. Best stand-stay and brace on any dog I’ve had yet.

Good dog! Bad wheelchair vendors. If only I could clicker train them! . . .

– Sharon, who has used a carrot for a long time and has now taken out her big stick! The muse of Gadget (I LIKED the Jet! But not as much as the scooter, which went faster), and Barnum (Sharon never takes me for walks anymore. Sigh.)

It’s ALIVE!

Those of you who read my post in late November know that, while trying to take Barnum for a walk, my powerchair died completely. I had to be pushed home.

I have a powerchair that I use for inside the house, but it’s no good for walks. That’s why, as part of my puppy-preparedness efforts, I bought this chair:

This is how my bad-ass chair looked when it was under construction, a year ago (before it got all dinged up and the batteries died).

I purchased an outdoor pchair that I got specifically so I could take Barnum on long walks in any type of weather (within reason), and over rough terrain. Since we live in the country, on a hilly dirt road, there really is nothing but rough terrain.

Because we live in New England, where winter lasts nine months, a snow-worthy vehicle was a must. Now, here we are, at Barnum’s peak adolescent-exercise-neediness time, and I am power(chair)less. Argh!

At first, it seemed like a simple matter of dead batteries. But when I plugged it in to recharge it, it wouldn’t charge. The red “Fault,” light on the charger glowed when I tried to recharge the batteries. The charger says that if this light appears, you should consult your manual. My chair was built from all recycled parts. There is no manual.

“Fault” seemed a bit too “on the nose.” As in, “It’s your fault that you bought a chair you have no idea how to maintain. It’s your fault you let the batteries die. And now it’s your fault this magnificent chair has been sitting here, ruining many of your dog-training plans, because you are too sick, overwhelmed, anxious, and incompetent to figure out what’s wrong and fix it!”

Indeed, for the past 10 weeks, the chair has remained dead. I have tried to gather information, but I have been overwhelmed and confused about how to figure out what is pertinent, what is not, and what to do about it all.

Plus, there have been all the various health crises, dog crises, dog training efforts, blizzards, migraines, etc.

Oh, and if you’re new to the world of assistive technology and health coverage in the United States and are wondering why I don’t just call my wheelchair vendor and ask them to come out, diagnose the problem, and order new parts, let me explain. My totally inadequate indoor chair was covered by Medicare. This means that I am not eligible for any other type of wheelchair coverage for at least five years or until the indoor chair stops working, whichever is longer.

It would seem to make the most sense to procure a chair that I could use both indoors and out, wouldn’t it? One that fit me and my fluctuating abilities and limitations, one that was suited to life in the country?

However, that kind of thinking does not fit in with the “four walls rule” of Medicare. This is how (bitter, angry) disability advocates refer to the guidelines for who is entitled to powerchair coverage, who is not, and what a chair must do for that individual.

In a nutshell, for Medicare to cover any piece of medical equipment, the recipient must provide proof that without it, they cannot get to the bathroom, kitchen, or bedroom. That’s it. If you are totally unable to eat or pee or lie in bed without a wheelchair (or other mobility aids), Medicare will cover a piece of equipment that does just enough to meet those needs. If, however, you ever want to go out into your yard, or down your street, or to the grocery store, and you need a mobility aid to do that, that is not a medical necessity, and therefore it’s not covered.

This is why I have a dinky little chair that serves me well indoors as long as I’m at my most functional, and a much more physically sustainable and usable chair for the outdoors. Again, let me head your question off at the pass: If the outdoor chair is so much better, why don’t I use it indoors, too?

Many reasons, the biggest being that it’s mammoth. For instance, the only door it fits through, in the entire house, is the exterior door to the ramp. Thank God that it does! It never even occurred to me that I should measure my door before I bought it.

It just barely fits going down the ramp, but only without the leg rests on. It also has big, knobby snow-blower tires. It would be like riding a tractor in the mall.

Dude! Check out these gnarly treads!

[Photo description: Closeup of the tires for the powerchair. They have purple “hubs” with black, thickly studded treads.]

All this time, Barnum and I have been grounded. I have one helper who can walk him two or three days a week, but only at a normal, walkie, sedate pace. I have a dog walker who comes weekly to take him on a hike around the pond. On the other days of the week, I try to schedule dog play dates in our yard so he can work off energy that way.

See, this is how we ROLL.

[Photo description: Five-month-old puppy Barnum races next to Sharon across the lawn. He is running full-out, with his ears flying straight behind him, his red tongue hanging out and to the side, his legs fully stretched out. Sharon, in her big power chair, watches Barnum as she zooms alongside. They run through the grass, with a metal fence in the background. Sharon wears a straw hat and shorts, suggesting a sunny day.]

But as a service-dog-in-training, he really needs the benefit of the bonding, training, mental stimulation, and exercise of going for walks with me. I’d been feeling like I was failing him.

I also really missed our walks, which were just starting to get easier, due to less pulling and more attention on me, instead of on everything else in the known (and unknown — to me) universe.

Lately, however, I’ve been building up steam to solve this problem. If it meant buying a new battery and new charger, and whatever else, so be it. I would find a way to make it happen. I just needed to figure out which type of batteries (which encompasses a huge range of brands, sizes, power sources, and more), which type of charger, etcetera.

Finally,  yesterday Betsy helped me take the chair apart. Neither of us really knew what we were doing, but nothing blew up. That seemed like a good sign.

One of the questions we’d had was, “Are these gel batteries, which is what almost all powerchairs and scooters use these days, or are they lead acid batteries, which is what the car mechanic who helped me fix the broken headlights thought they were?”

This time, by taking both batteries all the way out, I was able to read the answer — in Spanish and French. Nowhere in English did it say “lead acid” on it, but it did in these other two languages. So, that was good information.

I wrote down everything the batteries said, and we got all the part and serial numbers we could find — from the wheel motors, from the batteries, from the charger, from the controller unit.

Although I was approaching this as a fact-finding mission, I tried to do what I could to tweak anything that might improve the health of the chair. I checked to see that the headlights still worked, which they did . . . which was weird.

After all, if the batteries were completely dead — which would seem to be indicated by the charger’s “Fault” light and by the fact that turning on the chair’s controller did nothing at all — why were the halogen headlamps, which run off the batteries, still functioning?

I chalked it up to yet one more thing I don’t understand about mechanics and went back to research and repair.

We filed off some corrosion on the connections. I had Betsy move the charger to the kitchen table so I could examine the cords to make sure no wires were loose. I went to the charger to write down all the relevant data I could.

That’s when I saw it: The switch.

There are two switches on the charger. One switch is the on/off switch. I got into a bit of a problem a few months ago when the charger was lifted out of the back of the chair and then put back in. As the switch grazed against the chair’s exterior, the switch flipped into “off” position, and for three or four days I couldn’t figure out why the chair kept losing juice, even though I was charging it. I discovered the “on/off” switch, and ever since, I keep my eye on it.

However, there was a second switch I’d never noticed before. This is mostly because it is a recessed switch — the type of switch you need something small and pointy, like a pen, to move up or down. It was also because the hole that contained the switch was very low on the unit, so it was totally obscured by the rear wall of the chair.

The charger takes up most of the space in this rear "tray," with the hidden switch down where the tail lights ride.

[Photo description: Rear view of very tall powerchair. A gray captains chair seat and big, blocky headrest, and a purple wood tray “box” above the rear tires. The chair is outdoors, in about an inch of snow.]

Here’s what the switch says:

<< Up for conventional wet lead-acid

<< Down for maintenance-free gel-cell

I squinted. It was hard to tell, but the switch seemed to be in the down position.

“Huh,” I thought, and took a pen and flicked the switch up. Nothing blew up. That seemed like a good sign.

We put the chair back together. I told Betsy about the switch. Could it really be something so simple, we wondered?

Only one way to find out: Plug it in and charge it for 24 hours, and see if something changes.

I plugged it in. Nothing blew up. That seemed like a good sign.

The green light that indicates how desperately the battery needed charging flashed in its most pathetic, desperate, flickering manner. No surprise there. Even if the batteries hadn’t been dead before, after sitting for over two months without being charged, they would be now.

I stared at the “Fault” light. It seemed to glow faintly red, but I couldn’t tell if it was really glowing, or if it was just the reflected light of the flashing green charging button. I went to bed with just the tiniest wisp of a hope that what I’d discovered might do some good.

I let the chair charge all day, the full 24 hours. Partly, I knew that if the batteries were to have any chance to recover, they needed a ton of charging. Partly, I wanted to wait until I was ready for the disappointment when I discovered that the damage had already been done by charging the batteries — who knew how many times — on the wrong setting.

Tonight, I examined the charger. The “Fault” light did not seem to be glowing, now that the green light was just a steady green glow, not a frantic flashing.

Huh.

I unplugged the charger and put the cords in the back. I flipped on the power switch. The lights came on! First, all the way to the left, on “E” (for empty), then the bars moved to the right, all the way to “F” (for “Fuck, Yeah!” “full charge”).

I moved the joystick. The chair moved.

Never has the term “joystick” seemed so appropriate.

I screamed up the stairs to Betsy that the chair was working, and that I was going to do A Victory Lap!

Silly woman thought I meant take it outside. Outside, where the thermometer currently reads -9 degrees  (that’s negative nine Fahrenheit). With a windchill estimated at -25. Oh yeah, and there’s three feet of snow on the ground, which would completely cover not only the wheels, but also the lower portion of the seat.

This is how high the snow would be piled if someone plowed a pathway in our yard! The actual snowfall is about half this height.

[Photo description: Large powerchair with gray captain’s chair, black tires, and purple trim sits in front of snow bank that is taller than the chair.]

No, I told her, in the living room.

We have a nice, big, open space, “main room,” that is the combination living room/kitchen. I jumped on the chair and started it on low power, and set the speed to turtle. It moved, very slowly. And nothing blew up. That seemed like a good sign.

So I switched to high power, turned the knob all the way to rabbit, and let rip!

“Whee!” I squealed as I careened around the room, doing donuts and pin-point spins.

Barnum got into the spirit of things and chased around me.

I narrowly missed hitting various walls and pieces of furniture, and I did hit the plastic easel where I keep a list of behaviors Barnum and I are working on.

“Hey!” Betsy yelled. “That is an OUTDOOR chair!”

“Allllllriiiiiiight!” I yelled, as I headed for the kitchen, spun, and looped toward the hall.

“You’re going to hit something!” She bellowed. “There are glass plates around!”

“Where?” I scoffed. Betsy pointed. I shrugged as I zipped by.

“If you break something, I’m not cleaning it up!”

“Okay, Mom!” I said.

“Young lady, use your indoor chair,” she faux-whispered, like a kindergarten teacher telling a student to use their indoor voice.

We were having fun. We sang “We Are the Champions” by Queen, and did high-fives.

“Go, Team Wames!” We shrieked. (This is a combination of our last names that we just came up with last night. We like it because it sounds ridiculous.)

Do I still need to buy new batteries? Undoubtedly. These poor cells have been sorely neglected for months. I’m also going to add some extra electrical tape to the connectors (when in doubt, add duct tape or electrical tape). It remains to be seen how far I’ll be able to go on one charge.

And the leg rests are in serious need of repair, too.

But, at least we can try. At least Barnum and I will be able to attempt a short walk, stretch our wheels.

I just have to wait for a decent path in the snow. And the temperature needs to come up just a tad — thirty or forty degrees might be enough. (I definitely need to research how long lead acid batteries can withstand the cold, and to what temperatures.)

But meanwhile, we are flying! I plan to take a spin around the living room at least once a day. (Don’t tell Betsy!)

-Sharon, the muse of Gadget (who didn’t know from these newfangled contraptions), and Barnum (rebel with the paws)