What would Jake Sully Drive

At one point during the discussion of my therapy my doctors raise the issue of driving a car with hand controls. I would, of course, need to use a car with hand controls because my feet are no longer functional. Their jaws dropped when that when I said that I had already driven a car with hand controls and thus knew what was involved.

The story goes back to six months before my accident when I tore my Achilles tendon playing racquetball. I felt as if somebody had hit me in the back of my leg. It would later turn out that this is the most common description of somebody who has had their Achilles tendon rupture. It took about a week including several calls to my doctor my wife and another nurse practitioner before finally my wife correctly diagnosed the problem as a torn Achilles tendon. None of the providers seem to believe that I was able to hobble around while my Achilles tendon was completely broken.

I walked into the office of the orthopedic surgeon and announced that I probably had a torn Achilles tendon. I told my story. His response was to turn to the resident and say "this is exactly what the presentation of  torn Achilles tendon is like."

After the surgery I was in a cast and on crutches for a couple months. Because the surgery was on my right foot I was unable to drive during this period. This was a large handicap but I could count on the services of my wife to get me where I needed to go. Unfortunately, several weeks after I was put in the cast Verna was offered a job in Richland on the other side of the Cascades. My initial response was "no you can't go, you're my transportation".

Then I got to thinking… "Suppose I was paraplegic. Suppose I flew into a new city. I would, of course, want to rent a car and someone would be able to rent something that I could drive. My line was "What would Jake Sully drive?

Jake Sully is the protagonist in the movie Avatar and is a paraplegic.

So I called up Enterprise Rent a Car and asked whether it was possible to rent a car with hand controls.Their response was "When you need it?". Several days later I showed up and they gave me keys to a car with and controls. I had, of course,no idea or rather very little idea of how to drive a car with an controls, I drove VERY CAREFULLY around the parking lot about four times before I felt confident enough to VERY SLOWLY get out on the street and drive home by the least used route.

So what are hand controls? Hand controls consist of a bar which is mechanically hookedto the brake and gas pedals of the car. Moving the bar down mechanically pushes the gas pedal. Moving the bar away from you, toward the front of the car causes the brake pedal to be pushed. The connection to the brake pedal is shown below.

 

So learning to drive with hand controls consists of doing with one hand no exactly what you would with 1 footIt takes a little practice, but within a day or twoYou are not even thinking about what you were doing.

Freedom at last

Of all of the adaptations that I have made over the past six months, the one that has made the greatest difference in my life was obtaining a car with hand controls that I could drive and which gave me the ability to transport myself without assistance. After looking at a large number of cars, see a previous post, we ended up settling on the Nissan Cube.

We chose the cube for several reasons,first, it was less ugly than the Toyota Scion, the other car that we seriously considered. The seats are low enough to allow transfers to be made easily and yet the doors are high enough so that the wheelchair may be passed into the car. There is enough room in the back to allow the wheelchair could be stored while at the same time carrying four passengers.

In this pictureI have just used a board to transfer from my wheelchair to drivers seat. The next staff in using the car is to disassemble the wheelchair And play the place the pieces where they can readily be used to reassemble the chair when I get where I'm going.

This shows the removal of the seat cushion.

Here I am removing a wheel

Because the frame is too heavy for me to lift off the ground I clip a strap with a ratchet to the front allowing me to hoist the frame in several steps

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Finally placing it in the passenger seat

and driving off

A Small Friend

No one at our house was more distressed at the long time that I spent in the hospital than our cat. Normally I am the person who feeds the cat and pays the most attention to it and the animal was extremely upset that for over a month and a half I had simply vanished. When I returned he was happy to give me much of the affection that had been lacking during my absence.

With time he not only became accustomed to the wheelchair but discovered the joys of riding around in my lap. As I write this, the cat is happily sitting in my lap purring and collecting affection.

 

This picture shows the cat sitting in my pal as a cook dinner.

 

The cat now comes up and mews whenever he wants to sit in my lap and ride in the wheelchair and as long as I am not at the table eating I am usually able to oblige.