Requires some extra time to answer the door!

As a wheelchairdriver I do most of my shopping online and the couriers are streaming in and out of my home.

My record so far is 5 deliveries by 4 different companies within 2.5 hours!

By now I recognize the companies by their ring. For example 2 x very briefly in a row means 90% of the time “Trans O’Flex”, or a certain relative

Anyway, if I happen to be in the “East Wing” of my apartment, I really have to rush to make it to the door in time before the mail man leaves, especially if he’s new.

I’m either too slow or they’re too fast and if it wasn’t for the nice neighbor my package would go back.

Once I was expected to pick up a package at the “Next DHL-Kiosk” that is only 1.5 km away from my apartment. Unfortunately, it is up the hill and of course, there are stairs at the entrance … arghhh! At that point one needs good friends!!!

Just this morning I received a package from my medical supply store. Luckily I was already in the hallway.

This one had an additional sign for the driver:

Attention: requires some extra time to answer the door!

What a great idea! This is new to me and should be implemented everywhere. A big Thank You from this page to Heidelberg!

I have altered the sign a little bit for you to download and pass on – maybe to your medical supply store along with your next order

Download here PDF-enlish-version: Requires some extra time to answer the door!!!

Download or click on the pictures, copy, print etc….

PDF-link: http://www.eigude.de/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Requires-some-extra-time-to-answer-the-door.pdf

picture-link: http://www.eigude.de/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Requires-some-extra-time-to-answer-the-door-03.jpg

Translator BW

In my blogpost of 14.04.12 I expressed the suspicion (see older blogpost), that I am possibly a God of wrong deliveries, because I NEVER receive the ordered medication and medical devices.

Yesterday the time had come again, yet again the wrong compresses!!

My e-mail was rather short, but with

Memory picture for the warehouse staff

From the medical supply store I received a reply immediately:

…what should I say, I think the previous e-mail is self-explanatory!!!

The picture is going to be my new background )

I even had your case in our department meeting, your name should ring a bell… I don’t know what else I can do… I am really sorry!

Shortly afterwards I received the following e-mail in copy:

Please note the 31 exclamation marks in only 7 sentences.

Hello altogether, AND ESPECIALLY DEAR COLLEAGUES FROM OUR WAREHOUSE!!!!!!

It is not even a month ago that our customer Mr Rollinator took unbelievable 3 attempts to receive his compresses in the usual way!

NAMELY VYLENE COMPRESSES FROM MAIMED STERILE!!!!!!!!!

I don’t know why this is such a problem, but it simply can’t be true that the customer has received the wrong compresses yet AGAIN, especially because I have extra pointed out to you that you should look into the following already packed deliveries!!

I am glad that Mr Rollinator is simply an unbelievable patient person, but I would be FRANTIC!!!! And I seriously mean it!!

I don’t think it is funny, because unfortunately I don’t have any apologies left!

Please RETURN THE GOODS AND SEND THE CORRECT ONES AND CHANGE IT DIRECTLY FOR NEXT TIME!!!!!!

(Original colour of the e-mail, name changed)

Translator BL

When I am every 3 months at the beginning of each quarter jumping into the snake pit marked by the sign

“Required medication and medical devices”

I globally put the blame on myself meanwhile. If nothing works out right away despite all my efforts, it has to be up to myself, otherwise it is not explicable to me anymore.

In the novel “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Doulas Adams there is a truck driver who is always on the road in the rain. Unbelievable… he is a rain god, he just doesn’t know it himself.

It is probably similar with me and my orders of medication and medical devices, otherwise I would have to claim that nobody does his work properly anymore, and I don’t want to be assumptive.

After I paid my 10 €-membership fee every 3 months (translator’s note: as a member of a public health insurance in Germany you have to pay a surcharge of 10 € per quarter for medical consultation) the fun begins. I get a bunch of prescriptions from my family physician, where you can’t expect at 16 positions that everything is filled out correctly. It must be my karma that even the corrected prescriptions include minor errors sometimes.

If everything is correct, the prescriptions are split in two piles, medical devices and medication prescriptions, and then scanned immediately, because I don’t trust myself anymore.

I would like to point out here that I always pretty much need the same stuff.

I place the order of the medical devices per e-mail and attach the scanned prescriptions, and I send the original prescriptions by good old mail later.

For my pharmacy order I use a conventional telephone. The probability that I receive all pills as ordered in the correct quantities and from the correct producer is virtually zero and belongs into the realms of fantasy.

You can’t seriously expect that in a subsequent delivery with 3 boxes on the delivery slip also 3 boxes are included. With 2 boxes still 66% are correct, grade D, passing, okay…

The quantity of pills was correct this time, for a change the delivery slip wasn’t.

Now the delivery guy has put a box of pills in my mailbox which I will return personally today, whereupon I am convinced that I will hold exactly this box in my hands in 3 months time, this is not Aspirin.

Why is it not working, it can only be up to me…

It is not better with my medical devices.

Due to the so-called direct shipments I receive my materials from 4 different deliverers, who honour me with their visit between 10 and 19 h.

The guys always want to put the cartons on my knees and get off, I don’t like this at all. In the evening my corridor wall with all its boxes reminds a bit of the Berlin Wall.

In one of the warehouses they seem to have too much cardboard boxes and filling material. For 4 boxes of compresses and 1 liter skin cleaner they use a box of 60cm x 60 cm. As my friend usually says: Logistics doesn’t have anything to do with logic.

This time it was even the wrong type of compresses, they can pick up their box again, in the meantime it will stand in my way again. Maybe in an act of revenge I will put some old files from my apprenticeship into the box.

I don’t want to get upset anymore and I keep it with Douglas Adams:

I am probably a

God of Wrong Deliveries.

If everything would work out well at once I could certainly take some pills less.

Translator BL

To protect my – caused by the paralysis – non-existent sexy butt after the accident I have got a prescription 2008 from the health insurance for my home for a special mattress and a vertically adjustable electric frame for my double bed to facilitate the transfer in and out of the wheelchair.

This mattress to prevent pressure sores consists mainly of around 5 cm x 5 cm small rubber foam cubes which relieve the pressure on the body by bending. It is quite good.

If you are like me supplied by 3 different medical supply stores at once you shouldn’t get upset if a 100 cm wide mattress is pressed into a 90 cm wide slatted frame of my double bed. That will do, better than lying on a blank frame. An exchange of the wrong mattress was arranged by medical supply store # I only after my request after 1 year when they needed a new prescription (see letter below, in German).

The screwing of the slatted frame on the bed was not considered necessary by medical supply store # II. My wife was lucky that she didn’t crash onto the floor on her side of the bed together with her slatted frame because this was not screwed tightly either because of the modification. The squeaking of the brand new electric frame could be heard by the whole neighborhood. But this could be resolved by a friend with a can of silicon spray within two hours only.

Within 2,5 years the second mattress, the third remote control on which within 6 weeks the labeling was not readable any more, and the complete electronics including power unit were exchanged at this bed.

Each year I am contacted by medical supply store # I that they need a follow-up prescription from my doctor for the continuous supply of the mattress. If it would be defect, 10 cm too wide or sagged it would possibly be exchanged.

(Letter asking for a new prescription and to get in touch with the medical supply store under the mentioned telephone number to make an appointment.)

Since a couple of weeks the prescription is lying about on my desk. I am definitely interested to make an appointment, see letter. Nobody is answering the phone, the waiting loop is yelling as if you are at boot camp, and nobody reacts on my e-mails either. At least they are thanking me in advance for my efforts.

Translator BL

The instruction of my chief physician to rest my injured leg in an elevated position meanwhile causes sleepless nights for me.

Because the special

rented tank wheelchair

with foldaway footrests is innavigable for me and far too big I am already thinking since the time in hospital how I could realize to mount something on my wheelchair so that I can permanently rest my leg elevated, but also bend it.

I got the tip several times to put a wooden board below my cushion. Everybody who was ever sitting on a rocker knows where that ends.

Yesterday morning I woke up after a leg-elevation nightmare and miraculously I had a foldaway, removable footrest from my tank wheelchair on my everyday wheelchair. Strange things happen…???
I was very much delighted, a miracle, it must have something to do with Halloween.

First active wheelchair oft he world with fixed and foldaway foot rests

I would never dare to drill holes into my medcial supply store wheelchair.

Translator BL

I am looking for a text for this picture since weeks!

When “Tracy”, an employee of a store for medical supply next door to a wheelchair hotel on Tenerife drove out of the lobby with this vehicle I was completely perplexed, and I had tears of laughter.

I introduce it, probably the first world wide

Electric Inko Scooter

Tracy is a male nurse and makes everybody laugh with his sweet-and-crazy manner.
This guy is awesome, we need more of these!.

Look carefully, Winnie Pooh meets Mowgli

Everybody who knows me better knows that it is almost impossible to silence me without threat of brute force.

Yesterday it was about time again:

Call at the medical supply store:

Ring, ring..

Hello, here medical supply store Deliverix*, my name is Ignorix*!

Good afternoon, my name is Löw (that’s my real name), may I talk to Ms Compressi* please?

Just a moment, (waiting loop: please hold the line, please hold the line…)

Ms Compressi* is at lunch…, what’s the matter?

I would like to know if my delivery is on its way!

Why didn’t you just say that, what’s your name?
(Her tonality was quite snappy.)

Löw!

Lo, Lö , Loe, what’s your name?…

Löw, like the coach of the German national football team!

Löw, the name reminds me of something… (national football coach???)

Löw, I don’t know…, I don’t know… what is your first name?

Steffen

Löw, Löw… there was something… just a moment, (please hold the line…)

My PC today… Löw, Löw, I know the name… (please hold the line…)

Your delivery is on its way!

Now I know why I know your name:

I have packed your parcel!!!

I could still utter a “Have a nice day”, then my head sunk slowly onto my desk.

Today I was quite surprised that the correct goods were in the parcel. Usually this is packed by weight. Therefore the delivery note was missing today. So what…

*Names were falsified!

Translator BL

As wheelchair rookie I had to discover from the start that the description technical aid probably results from calling out loud for first aid if you are using them.

The manufacturers of technical aids, especially for us wheelchair users, seem to be convinced that from the moment you can’t walk any more you are getting deaf as well.

It is hardly believable, but even brand new wheelchairs clatter and creak like an old pushcart.

My favourite example is the anti-tipper of my wheelchair, I just call it wheelchair rattle.

How can you stick a metal pin through a tube and then put a wheel on it on the right and on the left without additionally fixing it?! Furthermore the part gets constantly deformed.

Then with the wheelchair across the pavement, and the joints become an acoustic speed indicator. Click clack, click clack…

I have e-mailed to the German manufacturer of my wheelchair and addressed the personnel directly on rehab fairs. At least a field technician of the company came to my home for repair and adjustment of my wheelchair.

He removed the biggest deficits of my “new wheelchair“, but in the end nobody was really interested in my “blah blah”.

The company Sopur (Sunrise Medical) allegedly doesn’t have any field technicians, so you are solely dependent on the “competence” of the medical supply store staff where you got the wheelchair from.

If it is even a wheelchair in re-use, i.e. a “makeover” used chair, then have a good trip!

I know a lady who has a purple wheelchair with red tyres which she got in a place 75 km away when she was in rehab at that time. She needs to be pushed outside, the chair is in my opinion not possible to move by herself.

This medical supply store specialist drives regularly to Frankfurt, exchanges parts and adjusts “professionally” her wheelchair. No other medical supply store may do anything with the wheelchair, this guy has sort of an exclusive screwing right.
These services are usually well paid by the health insurance. Wouldn’t it be cheaper in the end to provide a new wheelchair from a medical supply store in Frankfurt?

I see how bad the wheelchair is set up and what is defect, but can’t do anything against it. This guy can do what he wants. I wouldn’t imply bad faith, but who knows as pedestrian how significant the performance of a wheelchair changes if you turn the wrong screw. The lady doesn’t know any other wheelchair except for her own and doesn’t have any comparison!

In Austria each wheelchair has to undergo a technical inspection once a year, we don’t have such a thing!

Why not???

When I asked in October at the Sopur booth if it wouldn’t be possible to help my neighbour informally I was told that the wheelchair would have to be sent to the factory.
How do they think this could be done???

I don’t want to let anyone screw on her wheelchair for insurance reasons. The chair is almost falling apart anyway.

Hello company Sopur, can anybody hear me???

Meanwhile I have the 5th anti-tipper in 2,5 years on my wheelchair.

Translator BL

Each supposed holiday with like-minded people turns inevitably into a workshop of a

Support Group of medical device marred
wheelchair drivers and prosthesis wearers.

It is unbelievable what is screwed together by some experts (luminaries) in the medical supply stores.
Even I don’t have these special

Spinergy driving wheels

in my tuning equipment.

Such a specialist actually has fiddled a set of tyres type

Nan** Speed 80 Plus

on these precious wheels, what a sacrilege!

Words were dropped, it would be like a Ferrari
driving with Trabbi tyres.

** NAN, like grandmother

Translator BL