Crappiness pays off

I accept that I broke my wheelchair's controller arm and therefore deserve some blame, but who designs a wheelchair so the weakest part sticks way out alone in front of even your knees and even swung-away sticks out farther than the wheelchair seat?

If one loses one's balance and grabs for help to prevent a fall, one might be expected to grab the piece that sticks out. And if one had poor fine motor skills, the piece out front might get hit a bit more than usual. And if it tilts up, this out-alone piece might tend to ride up counters and other immoveable objects. But I am not a wheelchair designer ... at least not like the people at Pride.

I realize that all these potential problems should, of course, be of no consequence to most wheelchair users. Having the balance of an Olympic gymnast, they never fall. They have the fine motor skills of a concert  pianist so never have steering issues, either.

I do, though.

And my chair's controller arm has broken -- I have the pieces to prove it.

This has paid off several times when I or Dad has been able to fix a break by swapping parts out.

This time we had even more luck than normal.

The controller itself died a while back, and the repair shop switched the whole arm out. They also gave me the old arm.So Dad just swapped arms. Works again. Thank goodness, it has been so bad I have had to replace it often.