Submitted by Laura from Georgia.
My husband is a SCI@T5 with Syringomyelia and Central Neuropathic Pain. We also have a young child. When my husband first had his accident in 2006 he was given a lightweight manual wheelchair which we had to argue for as I was pregnant. But it was a wheelchair and it allowed us to get out and about. We are very grateful for it.
About 1.5 yrs later his right arm partially paralyzed as a result of Syringomyelia and made it difficult for him to move about. After waiting 1.5 yrs in March 2010 we finally got his power chair. It only partially worked. We kept having the company come out and then we went into the hospital only a few weeks after sitting on the new cushion (not the one we requested) for a level IV decubitus.
The power chair company refused to come out and fix the chair while he was in the hospital. When he finally came home we again had to fight and eventually contacted the corporate office to the maker of the chair. They extended the warranty and got the chair fixed. Again in 2011 my husband had many hospital visits and now that he seems stable I remembered that I needed to get the tune up. I called the corporate office as I was not interested in using the same DME vendor as who initially sold us the broken chair. It has taken me two months, too many calls and the charger no longer charges the chair. The sales rep to the corporate office is having me make all the calls to find someone to fix the chair.
I just learned that even though we have a warranty it is customary for them to charge a fee to look at the chair, customary for them for us to charge us for everything even though we have a warranty and customary for this process to take at least a month.
I am placing a call to our insurance company (as I just learned thanks to the NSCIA – Bill F.) that insurance might cover this.
In the meantime, my husband has a power chair that we can only seem to get “visitation rights” to and is pretty much stuck in bed. He doesn’t use the manual unless its an emergency as the handle bars for the caregiver push into his back and set off his Central Neuropathic Pain.
As a side note I can’t get a high end replacement cushion because the one I want for my husband I can’t get anyone to sell it to us…even with a pre-auth from the insurance company.
One final note….thank you for having a site like this…I will be handing it out. My thoughts are that cars are not one size fits all and yet we require there use to pretty much live each day. Power chairs MUST be thought of in the same vein!
