A glimpse of better things

I may have made a big mistake. Today we had a visit from a wheelchair rep., bringing with him a little Otto Bock Minny for Little Fish to try. It's lurverly! Very low to the ground, so her head is at the same height as other children her age, rather than a couple of feet higher. Small cambered wheels, super-steady, virtually untippable both sideways or front to back. She was practicing wheelies in it! Extremely easy to manouvre, and with an optional push handle for parents which can be removed when not needed. Just lovely! Choice of about 16 colours, very nice jungle style trim around the spoke guards, just very very obviously a chair designed for active toddlers. We liked it (incase that's not obvious!).

OK so where's the mistake? Firstly, although Little Fish sat in it beautifully and was able to move it all over the place with ease, it may not be suitable for one very simple and unfortunately unsurmountable problem - it's possible the wheels have latex* in them, and since Little Fish is already beginning to react to latex that would make the chair a non-starter. We haven't just removed all the latex from the house only to bring it back on the chair! So the rep needs to find that out for us.

Secondly, it's going to take around a month from when we pay for it to arrive. OK, that's not long really (not in the world of disability equipment anyway), but, yet again we're in the position where the rep bringing the chair out is not the person equipped to make the quotation. I don't know about you, but personally if I were bringing an item out to someone who might buy it, I'd also bring the order forms and the price list, and have a way of taking payment. You'd think this would be more efficient; he could go away with a cheque in his pocket, the company could order the chair and we could have it in just four short weeks. But that is apparently far too simple. Instead what has to happen is the rep goes back to the office. The office prepare the quote, and post it to us. There's a bank holiday next Friday and apparently we may not have the quote by then. I then write a cheque, post it back to them, they process the cheque, and place the order once funds have reached their account. So the four weeks for delivery could well have another three weeks tacked onto them before they get as far as placing the order. Grump. Plus no doubt another couple of weeks after that to make the minor adjustments we need.

That's unfortunate, but not in itself a mistake. Where is the mistake then? In letting Little Fish loose in that super lightweight, super manouvreable chair. She's now back in her regular manual wheelchair and has gone on strike! She refuses to push it herself, just sitting in it with her arms crossed telling me to do it for her. I can't really blame her - the Minny weighs 4kilos, her manual chair weighs 10. She only weighs 13 herself. She's going to have to get used to it again; there's no way the other will be ready by the time we go to Florida.

Speaking of which reminds me that we were at the Dr's today to collect Mog's nappies, and I forgot to ask for those medical necessity letters. Bother.

Tia

*I just typed that as Lycra; it took me far too long to work out what was wrong with that sentence!