Hello, hello! How’s everyone doing this wonderful Wednesday? Welcome to September! Things here are still “hurry up and wait” all around (Medicaid, wheelchair, etc.). I wrote 15,365 words in August and I wrote at least a little every day. I plan to do it again this month with my only real goal being “write more than August.” Anyway, I don’t have much to ramble about, so here’s another update to the Wheelchair Saga. You can find parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 at their respective links. Here we go.

Background: Randy from Universal Med Supply brought the chair out on July 28th. Two parts were wrong. It should’ve taken a week tops to get the replacements, but for some reason it took them a month (no idea who dropped the ball on this). I spent a month having to pull teeth to get answers and timelines. I’m not a happy Cyn (for those who don’t get the reference, I’ve been known as CynicalCripple online since the Yahoo chat days and people still call me Cyn). Anyway…

On August 31st, Randy brought out the replacement parts. Problem? He never bothered to learn how to program the button I ordered. Second problem? He was running so late that Sunrise Medical’s IT department was already closed, so he was going to have to come back again to program it with help. Why not just reschedule when you realize you’re going to be that late? I mean… I could have been the bigger person and told him to just try again a different day because I knew that was going to happen, but I’m petty. They want to make him make a useless trip, that’s their problem. I’m not giving them an easy out after everything they’ve done. But I digress. He replaced the knee pads with the correct thigh pads. So, those problems are at least partially corrected. Also, Mohamed didn’t send the “try it just in case” armrest pads. Again. I figure those are never coming and Dad will have to come up with something if the current armrests are too narrow to support my left side and right elbow. Also, there’s a new problem!

No one (looking at John West here) bothered asking me about what kind of joystick mount I needed and I honestly never thought about it or mentioning it. I figured a standard mount that sits against the armrest would be, you know… standard. Oops. They sent a swing away mount. In theory, it’s great. In practice, it’s not particularly adjustable and it’s way too far from where my hand would sit. My current joystick has never been very comfortable for me in that respect, but the new one is impossible. So, now I have to wait for a new mount for that. No idea how long that’s going take. Ugh.

It’s not like walking onto a car lot and driving away with something. Don’t ever think being cripple is easy. It’s mostly just paperwork and waiting.