I have found a great technical aid to open canned staple food, with fish, instant noodles, goulash soup, wieners, Coke, Bed Rull, beer and cider.
The Canpull opener was awarded with a design prize, the unofficial Oscar for household items of all kind.
One reason more for an extensive Rollinator test as I always had ambivalent feelings towards designer parts. From experience, unfortunately modern appearance and functionality rarely fit together.
This is not the case with the
Canpuller and Soda Snap
With one side
dog, cat and human food cans
can be opened tetra easily.
A small plastic nose clicks into the ring-pull of the can so that the Canpuller doesn’t slip off when it is bent for opening. This is working without problems.
Unfortunately the Canpuller doesn’t help against the burning lips if three chilli peppers are displayed on the “devil’s goulash” can. I am currently a little handicapped.
The other side of the award winner is suitable to open beverage cans in record time.
Thus you can pass an opened can of Prosecco to your colleague even after the eight successful test series with hop blossom ice tea cans of which the content was professionally disposed into the gorge.
This can opener is a well-thought-out and functional technical aid.
This holder has been developed mainly for quadriplegics like me with limited or no finger function.
You notice immediately that this part has been built by insiders, it has been really well-thought on.
The knife is fixed at the hand adaption. The holder is dishwasher safe.
There is no finger function necessary to use it.
I was convinced by the knife holder already after the first test.
With the weight of your own arm only you have already a strong pressure with the knife on the evenly to be sliced test objects, in this case out of pork.
The cutting could be done without effort.
My first test was not representative yet because thanks to the cooking skills of my wife the test samples to be cut were tender pieces of pork fillet.
Now I was in a dilemma: To complete the test series I had to try to cut tough meat as well!!!
To order a steak “well done” is against my nature, I am not a Botswanian who empirically puts a steak 20 minutes on the barbecue until it is dead for the 2nd time.
I decided that it wasn’t necessary to test if it would be possible to cut a tough piece of meat with the special knife or not. I wouldn’t like to eat it then anyway.
An appointment in the test lab “Charisma” in Frankfurt was made to come to a final conclusion.
As you can see on the picture the test object in this case was a beef steak with fried onions, fried potatoes and for the better gliding of the knife, a little herb butter.
The cutting of the meat was done extraordinarily well, I didn’t expect that.
The knife is very sharp, and the knife holder convinces all along the line.
It has to be decided on an individual basis to what extent the purchase of this technical aid makes sense.
I am convinced by this technical aid.
Unfortunately it doesn’t have a medical device number, thus only suitable for self-payers, whereas the price is absolutely fair.
Have a look at the older blogpost with my self-developed electric
There are various reasons for somebody to make himself comfortable in a wheelchair. I won’t go into any more detail concerning this point. With a little practice you can guess what has happened to this guy who crosses your way twenty meters before you’re close to him.
I would like to mention at this point that most of us just aren’t able to walk or to walk anymore, and apart from that the neuronal networking is at least at the same level with the average population.
It is not necessary to reject anybody who isn`t able to walk anymore and send him into retirement. There are too little jobs for wheelers!!
On TV you sometimes see actors doing pleasure rides in a wheelchair. An affected person would never take a seat in such a crap chair. A real wheeler brings his own requisite.
At advertising shots for technical aids like wheelchairs, handcycles, wheelchair accessories and special clothing I demand a few jobs for us. Indeed due to the paralysis the belly gets a little bigger, but with Photoshop you can retouch this without any problems.
Recently a glossy promotional sheet for wheeler clothing fluttered into my mailbox.
That’s not bad though so you always keep up to date what is hip regarding clothing, colours and accessoires during the next wheelchair season.
The supposed „colleague“ has a top handcycle with motor support harnessed to his wheelchair. This is even a special type of handcycle for a quadriplegic like me, who barely can or are completely disabled to grasp. When driving the hands are fixed and you change gears with your chin.
At least the model, probably a pedestrian or a paraplegic who has never seen a handcycle before, should have had to be told how to grasp the handles.
Does that always have to attract my attention only?
There they are, our jobs…!!!
Hands in handles should look roughly like this, look at my picture:
I don’t look too bad for a model, do I? OK, the belly is cut off
With all my replacement parts in and on my body I have to apply for a passport as “Borg” soon if it is “going” on like this. But without all this high tech there wouldn’t be much going on with me.
It always makes me a little sad when healthy adults call each other a “spaz”.
I only think: If you haven’t got a clue simply shut up!
Click here on the picture!
Spasticity occurs due to neural damages. The reasons are various, e.g. genetic defect, stroke or as in my case an injury of the spinal cord.
My damaged nerve endings got bored in a way six month after the accident, and they decided to give my body, especially my legs, tremors.
There were such powers that I could unintentionally do a backbend where only heels and shoulders were touching the bed.
In that time the spasticity increased daily. Some day one has reached the end of the medication dose that can be delivered with pills.
There is an ingenious solution, an
Implanted Medication Pump.
This pump is “embedded” surgically under the skin in the abdomen. From there a tube (catheter) is going to the spine. There is a needle which delivers the medication into the intrathecal space where fluid flows around the spinal cord. Because the medication is delivered directly to where it’s needed instead of tablets going through stomach, intestine, blood…, only small amounts of medication are needed.
The pump is programmable from the outside. To refill it the skin and a small silicone membrane in the pump are pierced with a needle.
Such a refilling with the amount of three-quarter of a champagne glass is enough for around 6 months for me.
After 7 years the batteries of the pump are empty and I have to go under the knife again. But I don’t mind…!!!
Just in time for my last birthday the pump got additionally filled with morphine against the pain. What a trip, I’d rather be boozed!!!
Actually unbelievable, but you are sitting with a black cap in the sun at 28°C in the shade with your head being cooled.
“Only” water is put on this cap, like on the vest, about 0,3 liter. The fleece on the inside of the cap absorbs the water, and the cap virtually sweats and cools.
Ingenious!!!
Unfortunately my match was cancelled, I forgot my tennis shoes.
After a few months in the hospital you get on rather friendly terms with nurses and physicians.
Of course a little piece of humour belongs to it as well.
If one as quadriplegic (spinal injury in the cervical area) like me can’t use arms and hands in an efficient way any more, spaghetti are not the favourite type of pasta.
One day the nurse came with the lunch, it was spaghetti, put it on my bedside table and was waiting for my comment if he could cut the pasta for me.
He was waiting for the comment in vain. I tried to eat these long objects by myself, have to see it sportingly, luckily I was not hungry…
It was a perfect show!!!
At some time a physician came into the room and watched this scenario with the pasta and me slightly grinning, but didn’t propose to cut the pasta neither, and I wasn’t keen on asking her.
I said to her that next time when the food is spaghetti again I would be motorised. I would only need two tie wraps to fix a fork. But had the suspicion that my milk frother would be a little bit too fast. We both had some fun. She didn’t seriously believe the thing about motorisation.
I only thought: You don’t know me!!!
Have a look yourself, one week later the
9,5 Volt Spaghetti Tetra Fork
About risks and generated injuries please contact your physician, nurse or nearest do-it-yourself-store staff.
Addendum: Construction manual for spaghetti tetra bit by popular request.
Saw a standard fork off and forge it flat. Really flat.
Saw approx. 5 cm off an M6 Allen key and weld it lengthwise to the fork stump. Not to the tine, I know it can happen!!!
Polish the welding seam with a one hand angle grinder. If possible keep a little bit of the welding.
Balance the bit at low speed on a drill press with a rubber mallet like a car tyre. Placing additional weight is not absolutely necessary.
Buy a cordless electric screwdriver with very low rotation speed, otherwise the special fork can be used to whip cream.
Boil spaghetti, and it’s done.
Safety instruction: Don’t start screwdriver with fork brought into the mouth, otherwise only the dentist will be happy.
paid by their health insurance. This would be so great, you could be standing again in your favourite pub at the bar to have a drink, and you would be able to get a coffee mug from above out of the cupboard without problems.
All this might be correct, but the question is, did the “standing wheelchair” get a medical device number for this ?
Everybody should be clear that coffee mug transportation from the cupboard and “standing elimination” of draught beer in general don’t belong to primary health care, therefore the public health insurance would cover the costs only in exceptional cases.
Furthermore the insurance would have paid already for an everyday wheelchair for sure with which you can also get drunk. So why a second…
I am outing myself, I have such a chair, and it is medically reasonable!!!
But officially it is not a standing wheelchair, but a
Standing chair or Standing exercise device
I repeat again, why should the insurance pay for two wheelchairs…
Everybody knows it, you were lying in bed with the flu for 3 days, and when getting up you see little stars first because you feel dizzy.
After my accident I have looked at the ceiling in hospital for 9 weeks and claim since then that I knew all shades of white.
During 8 months I was buckled up each day for 1 hour on a tilt table and tilted upwards as on a torture rack to permanently stabilise my circulation without additional medication.
Furthermore the standing chair helps to prevent muscle wasting and pressure sores.
After I was home also my tilt table was gone. My circulation was not happy at all with that. Although we para- and quadriplegics are famous for our low blood pressure… with a blood pressure of 42/35 I could still count the drops of my medicine… this was hard. I got a prescription especially for a standing chair, because my blood pressure refused another standing device comparable to a speaker’s desk.
It is incomprehensible, but when using these “standing desks” I felt close to fainting after seconds.
After testing of another device and longer correspondence with my insurance, roundabout a year, which was very fast, I got a
Standing exercise device
l
(ca. 7000€) approved.
Read my blogpost about a handrail (back at the wall) as transfer aid (see older blogpost), from everyday wheelchair to standing chair.
At this point I would like to personally thank all these blithering idiots because of whom the approval of these upscale medical device at the health insurance is understandably so difficult.
If you absolutely want to “stand” at your pub’s bar, buy your standing wheelchair by yourself!!!
Small tip, even if you are not so educated in using a language. In case of non-approval of a medical device by the health insurance consider correct wording and spelling in your objection. Otherwise the correspondence can drag on for years…
I know a case in which the insurance wanted to place an electrical standing wheelchair in re-use which is 10 km/h fast into the living room of a patient in the 1st floor.
This is somehow unusual, but medically absolutely justifiable.
My spinal cord has decided in 2007 that sweating is stupid.
Since then my skin is quite dry
This phenomenon is nothing unusual with para- or quadriplegia.
As a consequence my body temperature rises and rises when it is above 25° C and sun.
This can lead until fainting at approximately 40° C.
A water sprayer for flowers can work miracles (see older blog post), but is not the best solution either.
There are special cooling vests, with thermal packs or fans, well… I think it is too complicated, and you are depending on thermal packs and refrigerators. So I prefer hiding at home and waiting for the winter.
In May I met Sepp Jakober on a technical aids trade fair, the chief engineer of the wheelchair tractive Swisstrac who gave me tuning tips for my Minitrac.
He gave me a vest from the company E-Cooline and said that I would absolutely have to try it. He borrowed it from another booth.
The vest would cool you, you just have to put water on it, the water would not flow out, hard to believe!!!
The vest would absorb the water, virtually sweat and thus cool you.
It was invented for fire fighters.
The cooling vest was working!!!
A quantum leap for quality of live.
I underwent a two-week stress test with the cooling vest in Crete.
It doesn’t get wet, the body feeling can be described as cooling-clammy, but it is not unpleasant.
Be careful with filling water in it as 4 liters fit inside, and then you would have to wait approximately 3 days until you are able to wear this “lead vest” again. There is no water dripping off. 0,5 liters are more than enough for approximately 4 hours at 30°C in the shade.
The Cooline vests are available in a simple design with velcro tape, see picture above, or two rows of snap fasteners and additional removable lower part.
From the same material there are scarfs and caps available which I would like to test as well.
I was able to stroll around at the beach promenade with my wife in the afternoons at 30° C in the shade without water sprayer or wet towel.
The cooling vest made a great holiday possible, and I have just ordered a black vest and cap.
The price of approximately 300 € is not low, but if you bear in mind what you have to pay for good winter clothing or trivial cotton jeans I consider the price justifiable for a vest out of such a high tech material.
This vest opens so many possibilities for me, I don’t have to hide any more in summer!!!
The only disadvantage is that the vest weighs around 4 kg after washing and you have to wait 3-4 days until it has dried again.
You can purchase these vests from E-Cooline
Unfortunately these vests don’t have a medical device number. With an adequate prescription and statement from the doctor some health insurances would bear the expenses.
My friend always tells me that I have a static like
Bernd das Brot
(German kids television character, an ill-humoured bread)
Long torso, short arms and short legs.
Therefore the transfer from wheelchair to car belongs – because I can’t stand and the door sills are becoming wider and wider – into the realms of fantasy.
This gap is insurmountable for me. Many wheelers have the same challenge (I have abolished all “problems” years ago, see front page) and use a slide board, with which they glide as elegantly as possible from wheelchair to car seat. To learn this there was once a
brand new car lifted with a tower crane in the 9th floor
of a hospital in Frankfurt which is standing since then in the corridor of the occupational therapy.
The car won’t be stolen for sure!!!
Almost all car customizing companies offer a permanently mounted foldaway slide board, with which one can transfer relatively save to the driver seat.
Why one is dragged at the trouser waistband into a car at rehabilitation fairs and the International Automobile Exhibition (IAA) in Frankfurt, because these “specialist companies” don’t even have a slide board with them, is incomprehensible for me. Usually a mounted slide board should be part of the basic equipment.
Only on demand I got an offer for a foldaway slide board.
Get yourself a
permanently mounted slide board
fitted if you also have difficulties with the transfers.
You can drive with the wheelchair directly to the transfer board.
As you can see perceived 2 kg key chains are normal for me!
You have a let’s call it gripper adapted to the hand.
This is opened and closed pneumatically by pushing a button with the other arm.
Depending on the handicap there are various different grippers, hand adaptions, etc. etc. etc…
You are able to grip again.
This gripping aid facilitates again independent eating, drinking, writing… ingenious!!
When I was asked I immediately volunteered as test person for new developments. Maybe I can help a little bit.
Look at the homepage and make it known.
Not to be able to walk any more is one thing, but not to be able to grip properly any more is not really great.
Take away the tools from a technician, and he will get them back!!!
The key chain is from the German technical relief organization
Let’s wait and see if I recognize myself in the mirror after the next test series
Everybody who knew me before my accident still remembers that I couldn’t sit quietly for 5 minutes. I am catching up this time now intensively.
The bad thing with a para-/quadriplegia is that often all muscles at the butt are lost.
If some day only the hip bones poke out of the bottom, the butt starts to “ouch” as if you were just driving with the car nonstop from Frankfurt to Rimini.
Cushions for wheelchairs are a science in itself. Starting with a simple piece of rubber foam for cheap 120 €, via shockingly expensive comb cushions which look like a beehive for 600 €, up to inflatable special cushions which looked upon from above remind of a box of chocolate marshmallows.
I am using a comb cushion myself which actually is rather good. I consider the price of 125 € for an adequate seat cover which in my case starts ripping at the corners after 6 months as such a cheek that I have my covers privately mended to avoid charging my health insurance with such exorbitant prices. Everything has its limit, currently my cover has leather on the corners!
As just explained there are endless types of wheelchair cushions…
Why shower commode chairs are only slightly cushioned if at all, is inexplicable for me. After long research I have found an approximately 1,5 cm thick
Gel rest for shower commode chairs
The investment of 143 € is worth each cent.
I am using it daily for meanwhile 6 months now and I am absolutely content.
This shower commode chair is a standard model: Apart from the fact that the brake springs were broken after 2 years and the rear tyres were seized up, the shower water accumulates on two slots on the front tyres. This can only be topped by the fact that water is accumulating in the inside of the frame and can’t drain off, because there is no exit for it.
They should have provided the information that the shower chair is not water resistant!
My daily consumption of various pills against all and everything which partially remind of suppositories in their form is altogether a complete meal.
I enjoy them in the meantime like gummi bears.
The colours are great, but the industry still needs to work a little on the taste.
Michelin-Starsfor the most delicious dope, that would be something.
According to the motto: A problem shared is a problem halved, some pills might be halved and quartered.
Luckily my wife takes over the weekly pill destruction.
If I would try this by myself I would have probably gone into the light out of despair (suicidal tendencies).
I have found a
Pill splitter type Apex Ultra
which is really working and has additional protection at the blade.
It is hardly believable but it has a price incl. shipment of less than 10 €!
Everything accessible, 2 pools with lifters, a store for medical supply next door, etc.
Everything great, apart from one little thing:
Tenerife is a volcano island, and the hotel is on top of a hill, fantastic…!
A Paralympics participant might be able to conquer this mountain by himself, but not me, never ever.
Many hotel guests bring their own electric wheelchairs from Germany which often become victims of the airlines, or they rent a scooter during their stay.
I once got the tip when I am down at the beach and would like to go up to the hotel again, to wait for the next electric wheelchair driver and tow myself on to him.
Well, I didn’t rent a scooter, but already for the second time a wheelchair tractive.
I already reported in October 2010 about my positive experience with this tractive type:
By coincidence I got the offer in Tenerife to buy a Trac in black, even fitting my wheelchair colour.
I could not resist and acquired my approximately 10 year old, new toy.
The re-import of the once in Germany produced Minitrac from Spain was a little bit difficult.
At the check-in at Tenerife airport, a slightly panic flight passenger broke off the steering linkage. The thing was fairly crashed.
In Frankfurt my own wheelchair was damaged as well so that I could not ride it on my own because the wheel was rubbing at the brake.
With all the luggage and a little overstrained lady from the airport handicapped service it was a perfect mess.
Without the help of my wife I probably would still be standing in Terminal 1.
After a first repair of the steering linkage of the Minitrac and a set of new batteries the first rides in Frankfurt could be made.
This thing rides only with 6 km/h, therefore doesn’t need a license plate and doesn’t have any constraints from the technical control association. Some ideas come to my mind immediately what could be changed . Wait and see…
If you are typing with only one finger like me some tips fall by the wayside for lack of typing. But therefore one talks to another!
If ideas are helping other handicapped, and they are publishing these in other medias, i.e. typing for me, then I take the freedom, do it like Guttenberg and copy it:
Many tips are received on Tenerife in the health resort Mar y Sol from other concerned people. Steffen (alias for Rollinator), wheelchair user as well, brought me to a great medical device:
Both my wheelchair and my stairlift have sharp edges on which I hurt my heels occasionally.
Additionally my legs angle spastically in the night and thus the foot is rubbing tightly across the bed sheet with the heel.
Result is a bedsore at the heel.
Although there are special cushions which are fixed with Velcro strips, they are not useful for me. Due to strong leg movement unfortunately the cushion is not where it should be any more the next morning. Steffen recommended a
Tubular Bandage from towelling
(Nobafrott PZN 7094346), which usually doesn’t slip off and led to the healing of the bedsore.
I bought the bandage rather low priced at the HAD pharmacy (vitaware.de) for 85,09 Euro. The length of the bandage should be generously measured – can be cut from the 5 m.
Source: Olaf
When I sleep a night with the “socks” I don’t have swollen feet in the morning anymore.
The use of the tubular bandage has to be discussed with the physician for possible thrombosis risk or blood pressure problems!
We don’t want to harm anybody and assume no liability.
The photo with the crossed socks reminds a bit of a pirate flag, “Mouse Ahoy”!
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