Football Women’s World Cup Part III
七月 18th, 2011Football Women’s World Cup Part II
七月 14th, 2011Eigude Shame XVII
七月 13th, 2011My suspicion is that construction engineers compress their planning to the most confined space not because building sites are so expensive, but only for that reason because they would otherwise need to print another piece of paper!
Everybody knows it, when you are writing a letter on the PC and the text doesn’t fit onto one page, you also try with smaller line spacing and font to squeeze everything onto one page.
In a building in the neighbourhood a new emergency stair case with new entrance area was built in the record-breaking time of two years.
They have taken much effort that the residents of the neighbouring houses will still remember the reconstructions years later.
I was positively surprised that on the side of the entrance a small
Outside lift for wheelchairs
was built. Great thing because in this building there are living also many old and frail people who may need a wheelchair in a couple of years.
We generously overlook the stair on the left with which the waste disposal is made a little difficult for us “travelling people”.
I am actually not concerned any more, but how can you construct such an extremely
Steep Stairway.
The stairs are very high and consist even out of polished granite. The lady on the picture had greatest difficulties to climb the entrance with her walking stick. There would have been more than enough space to front for the stairway construction, but as mentioned probably the paper was too small. The guy who is responsible for the construction of this stairway should be accused for attempted injury.
After the next winter the fresh wheelers due to a downfall from the stairs will probably queue in front of the outside lift!!
Translator BL
Football Women’s World Cup Part I
七月 12th, 2011Addendum to the fairy tale from June 29th
七月 11th, 2011Technical Aids tips and tricks XL
七月 10th, 2011Look at this, a
Jacuzzi Hoist!
Producer is Sunrise Medical (Sopur).
Could be difficult to integrate this thing in my bathroom.
Technical Aids Tips and Tricks XXXIX
七月 9th, 2011Some wheelchair users proudly claim to have a
“standing wheelchair”
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.
Translator BL
Technical Aids Test Crete Part II
七月 2nd, 2011Freeway T 40
(I don’t mean the bus.)
The White Mountains of Crete
The place on my right is free…
Freeway T 40, the off roader among the shower commode chairs 
The English shower commode chair “Freeway T 40″, not to confuse it with a Ferrari F 40, is a quite useful medical device. The idea to take a commode chair on the island tour with 4 wheelers from the wheelchair Hotel Eria Resort on Crete is great because wheelchair accessible toilets on Crete are scarce.
If you would like to learn more about this great little hotel, have a look in Facebook or press on the link!
Translator BL
Where are the 70.000 workers at Frankfurt Airport???
六月 30th, 2011Long “fairytale”, but worth reading!!!
On Saturday I landed exceedingly on time on 22:30 from Chania (Crete) in Frankfurt.
I will never understand why some people are applauding after the landing. Nobody was ever applauding for me when I did my job well. Anyway…
The aircraft was parking on a remote stand, I had as usual a nice window seat and watched very relaxed the totally stressed pedestrians leaving the plane.
As wheelchair user you have the privilege of the last passenger after the landing.
The flight captain stated that he had requested the special lifting bus and adequate members of the ground staff already several times, so that I could leave the plane as well.
But nobody came!!!
Parts of the crew and the pilot provided some company to me with which they apparently had some fun. The unwritten law that the captain is the last to leave the ship is still of great importance at Condor.
Eventually someone from ground staff came and seriously asked me if I could walk. He accurately observed that he could not help me on his own. Insight of the day…
While waiting for the lifting bus the luggage was unloaded, so I asked a crew member to check if my wheelchair and wheelchair tractive Minitrac are waiting on the airfield and hopefully are not loaded on the luggage carts.
He said that this would be the case, the things would be standing there. Uff…
The lifting bus finally arrived around 23:10, I left the aircraft with the help of two strong guys and my beloved plane transit wheelchair.
Afterwards they helped me into my own wheelchair which unlike my Minitrac was fortunately still there.
Anyway, so we had to get my Minitrac at the bulky luggage claim.
With the bus we were not brought as usual to the FraCare Service (Service for handicapped at Frankfurt airport), because this area was already closed at this time, but to a different entrance.
There a friendly employee from FraCare was waiting for me.
She said that our luggage would be in the reconstructed building C, and we would have to see how we get there at this time because some of the elevators were switched off.
She used her phone virtually as GPS and lead us confidently like a bushman in the desert through the corridors of the building.
When we finally arrived at the luggage belt we didn’t have to search our luggage for a long time, our 3 bags were rotating around and around.
The whole baggage claim area was almost deserted, there was not even a luggage thief.
My Minitrac
stood with its 65 kg a little disjointed in a plastic box on the bulky luggage belt!
My wife reassembled the Minitrac to begin with.
It is unbelievable, but at 23:44 nobody responsible was there nor could be reached by telephone, who could lift my little box from the luggage belt.
In the meantime even the last passengers were gone who we could have asked for help.
At last my wife has magically lifted my Minitrac from the luggage belt together with two men whom I just call Mister X and Y here. At this point I would like to thank them and the employee of FraCare again!
I left the terminal at 23:55!!!
My pre-ordered wheelchair taxi was kindly waiting in front of the terminal.
I have sent this “fairy tale” in a slightly modified version to Fraport (operating company of Frankfurt Airport) requesting their comments. I will keep you informed.
To my shame I have to admit that I used to work 9 years at the Frankfurt airport before my accident.
Translator BL
Technical Aids Testing Crete Part I
六月 29th, 2011Ingenious: A cooling vest which only needs water!
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.
The E-Cooline vest is really cooling, ingenious!!!
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.
For question as usual: rollinator@eigude.de
With all this verbiage Karl Lagerfeld would probably be proud of me!
PG-13 prohibits to show my “six-pack” stomach!
Translator BL
Back from Technical Aids Testing!
六月 27th, 2011
Test reports will follow shortly.
Wheelchair Tuning Part XXV (Competitor)
六月 9th, 2011I don’t want to keep the beach wheelchairs back from you 
I think the Sopur wheelchair for children is awesome. A good pusher is a must.
(Deutsch) Rollifahrer-Seepferdchen
六月 8th, 2011
Technical Aids Tips and Tricks XXXVIII
五月 31st, 2011My 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!
Translator BL
Alternative Therapy
五月 30th, 2011There are various therapies for muscle relaxation.
Mud packs, acupuncture, massages of all kind, stimulation current therapy, etc. etc. etc…
There is a shockingly expensive machine called Galileo which is basically just a vibrating plate on which you can regulate different frequencies.
On Saturday night we went to the group vibration therapy, similar to Galileo, to the “Festhalle” in Frankfurt (big event hall).
The English therapists are known since 1975 under the name
Iron Maiden
and achieve with their years of experience and permanent frequency changes best possible therapy successes by full body vibration.
Muscle build-up by clapping and CPAP lung exercise by singing along!
By slight shock-values generated by the stage design additionally the circulation is stimulated.
Several thousand patients were treated at the same time.
An additional positive effect is that you can still hear slightly the sound of the ocean days later which causes a holiday feeling.
Incomprehensibly the health insurance does not cover the costs of this since 36 years proven and tested alternative therapy.
Read my older blogpost Football ticket on prescription.
Translator Teo
