Posts Tagged ‘Tetra Tipps’

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Technical Aids Tips und Tricks XLI

星期二, 七月 26th, 2011

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.

Have fun with dotting your flat red!

Translator BL

 

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Posted in Allgemein, Everyday life aids, Comedy, Hilfsmittel, Hilfsmittel für Tetras, Selbstgebaute Hilfsmittel, Tipps und Tricks | 2 Comments »

(Deutsch) Nachtrag zum Artikel vom 29.06.2011 über eine Kühlweste!

星期二, 七月 19th, 2011

对不起，此内容只适用于Deutsch。

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Technical Aids Testing Crete Part I

星期三, 六月 29th, 2011

Ingenious: 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

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Posted in Allgemein, Everyday life aids, Einfach toll!, Hilfsmittel, Hilfsmittel für Tetras, Links, Tipps und Tricks, Urlaub | 2 Comments »

Technical Aids Tips and Tricks XXXVIII

星期二, 五月 31st, 2011

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!

Translator BL

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Posted in Allgemein, Everyday life aids, Car and Hand Throttle, Hilfsmittel, Hilfsmittel für Tetras, Tipps und Tricks | No Comments »

Technical Aids for Quadriplegics VIII

星期二, 五月 24th, 2011

对不起，此内容只适用于English和Deutsch。

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Technical Aids Tips and Tricks XXXVI

星期二, 五月 10th, 2011

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!

Translator BL

 

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Technical Aids Tips and Tricks XXXV

星期三, 四月 27th, 2011

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-Stars for 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 €!

Source of supply enquiries as usual under rollinator@eigude.de .

Click also on tag “pills”.

Translator BL

 

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Technical Aids Tips and Tricks XXXII

星期三, 四月 6th, 2011

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”!

Translator BL

 

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Technical Aids Tips and Tricks XXX

星期五, 三月 11th, 2011

If you are like me major customer of the pharmaceutical industry you should expect that the pills will be delivered already sorted according to intake date and daytime.

Because unfortunately this is not the case you have to prepare your daily dope yourself.

To elicit the pills out of the blister there are except from the well-tried “I squeeze hard with my thumb” technique the most different technical aids.

To what extent these pieces are useful is of course depending on the particular handicap of the user.

Here is a small selection:

With this a little futuristic appearing

double cone,

you are able to squeeze the pills out with one hand. But only very few fit into the collecting bowl.

This small

Taiwanese Pill Puncher

you should always use very gently. Sometimes you have to cut the blisters so that you can also squeeze out middle sized pills. But it is more robust than it looks like.

New on the market is this

German metal model.

Developed and built by a locksmithery. Not suitable for capsules, the spring steel sheet has to be bent back again and again. But the white bowl can be removed which might be quite useful.

On the American market I have found this

Pill Puncher.

My current winner. Simple and well-thought. The collecting bowl is the entire square lower part with which the pills can be emptied after squeezing them out like with a shovel.

I haven’t found a pill puncher yet which I can use reasonably with my buckled fingers. If you know or use other types please write a comment, or e-mail as usual to rollinator@eigude.de .

I need urgently new dope!

Translator BL

 

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Posted in Allgemein, Everyday life aids, Hilfsmittel, Hilfsmittel für Tetras, Tipps und Tricks | 2 Comments »

(Deutsch) Werbung Part I

星期二, 十一月 30th, 2010

对不起，此内容只适用于Deutsch。

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Quadriplegic Tips XVII

星期一, 十一月 22nd, 2010

I am totally convinced that I own the coolest

Floss dispenser

of all times.
Manfred the fisherman motivates me every morning anew to do something meaningful with the day, provided that you define the “nonsense” that I permanently produce as meaningful.
Everything is to my opinion more meaningful than to sit on the couch and wait with the PS2 plastic fishing rod that the fish virtually bites the bait on TV. (No joke, see older blogpost).

Well, if the fish is delicious!

Back to the floss. The usage of floss in traditional technique leads with my light-fingeredness, with the emphasis on “light”, inevitably to undesired self-bondages and strangulations.

There are these little flossers with which you have to watch out that you don’t swallow them. According to latest rumours the new floss holder with integrated span mechanism and rubberized grip handle of the brand GUM:

Floss holder type Flosbrush

looks exactly like the strange thing which is lying on my table since the last midsummer. The engineer was probably quadriplegic. This great part is not available at German retailers.
But ask your dentist or druid on the corner (pharmacy) if they can order such a thing. The old model doesn’t have a span mechanism yet, but is also good to handle. The new one will be launched in the next weeks.

I don’t know yet how much it will cost.

Translator BL

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Posted in Everyday life aids, Hilfsmittel, Hilfsmittel für Tetras, Tipps und Tricks | 1 Comment »

Technical Aids Tips and Tricks XXII

星期二, 十一月 16th, 2010

Als ich noch “Fußie” war, bin ich je nach Dienst um 04:30 Uhr aufgestanden. Das es zu dieser Zeit recht dunkel ist, wenn man ums Bett geht und zuvor die Nachttischlampe ausgeschaltet hat, ist klar. Mein Schienbein hat sich hierbei in regelmäßigen Abständen mit der Ecke des herausragenden Bettrahmenbalkens angelegt und verloren.
Aus diesem Grund hatte ich mir seinerzeit ein batteriebetriebenes

LED-Nachtlicht mit Bewegungsmelder

angeschafft, das ich quasi als Bettunterbeleuchtung verwendet habe. Diese Teile sind mittlerweile recht günstig und im Baumarkt, oder zeitweise beim Discounter für unter 10 € zu erwerben.

Jetzt habe die LED-Lampe auf meinem Nachttisch stehen. Da muss ich nur mal mit der Hand winken, damit das Licht angeht.
Dies ist genial, da ich durch die Lähmung der Beine / Hüfte wortwörtlich wie ein Maikäfer auf dem Rücken liege und nicht ohne größte Schwierigkeiten an den Schalter der normalen Nachttischlampe komme. Am Boden in der Wohnung machen die Teile auch Sinn, da muss man beim Durchrollern von Zimmer zu Zimmer nicht immer alle Lichter Ein- und Ausschalten.

Mit Akkus bestückt “geht” mir ca. 3 Monate lang Nachts ein Licht auf!

LED = Lumineszenz Emitter Diode

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Technical Aids for Quadriplegics

星期四, 十一月 11th, 2010

With my buckled Tetra fingers I can’t open cans any more.

I think that I might succeed some day with this

plastic bow

.

The can is standing on a non-slip mat (see older blogpost).

The leverage is considerable.

The opener is distributed by the Company Brix Denmark.
The company produces other openers as well.

With this part it should be possible to open an

Eintracht- Frankfurt Adlerschoppe

.

It is incomprehensible to me why the plastic bow is called J-Popper.
Let’s think about it…

Translator BL

 

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Posted in Allgemein, Everyday life aids, Hilfsmittel, Hilfsmittel für Tetras | 6 Comments »

Technical Aids Tips und Tricks XXI

星期二, 十一月 2nd, 2010

Almost all wheelchair users are using bicycle gloves which they buy every now and then at the discounter.
My needs for these quality products were plentiful, the more expensive ones weren’t any better for wheelchair driving either.
I got the tip to switch to sailing gloves because they are more robust and additionally reinforced at the forefinger to let the ropes run through for sailing without burning the fingers.
Furthermore the glove fixes very well around the wrist which is very important for me as quadriplegic for braking to not loose the gloves. The velcro tapes are fixing well, and the leather is out of one piece. The gloves are available in Antara leather or Neoprene.

Sailing Gloves

The price starts at 10,00 €.
Source of supply can be enquired.

Contact: rollinator@eigude.de

Now I am just missing a sailing boat.

Translator BL

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Technical Aids Tips and Tricks XX

星期五, 十月 29th, 2010

Los Cristianos in the south of Tenerife is exceedingly accessible, but quite hilly and only to cope for fit wheelchair users or with extreme pusher.
Wheelchairs, rollators, crutches and rented scooters or electric wheelchairs belong to the townscape.
An alternative to electric wheelchair or scooter is an approximately 60 kg heavy, little tractive.

Minitrac or Swisstrac

I call this thing a mobile cider crate.
With some practice the docking is quite easy. The tractive power is remarkable. I didn’t have any difficulties with gradients, provided that the floor plates were not too slippery.

Curbs are no hurdles at all. The docking bar in the mid of the wheelchair can be de-installed easily, even with a foldable wheelchair.
The some year old Minitrac has passed my 10 day test quite well. Although it was mounted to my wheelchair in a little unconventional-creative-spanish way, it was technically absolutely alright.
The Minitrac a German and the Swisstrac a Swiss product are quite similar. I only heard good things about the Swisstrac, but haven’t tested it yet. I have seen the new Swisstrac on a fair, the new docking station is easy to handle for quadriplegics.

I like these small things, and they fit into any trunk, if a well-trained pedestrian is found to lift it.

The colour was disgusting: pinkish red with glitter effect! Ugh…

There is one comment worth to be translated from the chief engineer of Swisstrac

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