So you took your "leap of faith" and discovered just how faithful you were. Life's lessons are very powerful and taught you an experience in traveling, and against all odds. It sounds like you did well, considering the odds. Knowledge is a very powerful tool and look at the knowledge you gathered and learned. Are you planning on doing this again... in the future? Visit Hoosierland, Save A Buck. Best Wishes In a message dated 6/14/2010 11:22:35 A.M. Central Daylight Time, [email protected] writes:
I don't know really where to begin with all the recent topics being talked about but here is a wild story for you! Starting this past January I started planning a trip to visit my family in Tucson Arizona from north-central Indiana. After finding no volunteers to do my personal care and thought I could hire an agency that backfired after one of them informed me that I would need a Arizona physician regarding any care given by the agency. Only learning about that about one month before the trip messed up everything and almost went into panic mode until somebody sent me a link from craigslist. Well they listed 17 potential individuals as caregivers and between e-mailing and phone calls only ended up with one person as a candidate. Then after trying to get my brother-in-law to meet with him to make sure he's real, that turned into a nightmare of him not wanting to take me on as a client. Now two weeks before the trip almost beyond desperation my sister-in-law save the day by sending me another caregiver website with A lot more credible individuals which responded to e-mailing and phone calls almost the same day! The link is <_http://www.care.com/_ (http://www.care.com/) > After a quick phone interview and taken a leap of faith I found somebody which worked out great and was a very reasonable financially. Now speaking of craigslist after posting the need of an individual for a caregiver it only stayed up less than 48 hours before somebody flagged it and no notification from craigslist on why which is absolutely stupid even after trying a hold of them! In that short amount of time another individual responded to my ad because the original girl had a family emergency come up in the middle of my one-week stay called the second girl which quickly stepped in to take her place during the morning but this third individual also responding to my ad promised to do the remaining evenings only to show up one time and then not respond to phone calls or text messages for some reason. So between Facebook and craigslist I was able to get care almost everyday despite my family not willing to do my intimate personal care but they did help out with transfer into bed which was a simple deadlift. I was trawling with my roommate which lives with me and she knows all my care except for the most intimate portion of it. But she was trained how to change the catheter just in case of emergency and hope she had fun of getting out of Indiana for a week. Now getting to Chicago which is two hours west of me taking a shuttle bus which turned out to be a great option in the past, until they updated with a modern bus which is absolutely inadequate for a power chair both on the lift and the given room strapped down the chair after removing the leg rest the whole trip! Now dealing with American Airlines everything was prearranged just like my other five trips and after boarding everybody we were informed that we needed to change planes because of mechanical difficulties. So after the hassle of transferring me all over again in and out of the aisle chair and a manual chair thought we were ready to go but not so quick to think that? Another hour waiting for mechanical issue again and almost needing to change planes again, we finally got off the ground about 2 1/2 hours then our schedule flight take off. Upon getting me off and discovering that my chair had no power and thought they disconnected the main power like before which was not true for this trip. Because I have a Invacare Ranger X. with gearless brushless motors and the transportation package they were unable to even find my main battery connection. So the marathon of phone calls began which required one local wheelchair technician to come to the airport at least to get the power establish one more time but then the reset switch would not work! I have one of my head rest which is a motion sensor that has worked out great until this moment. More phone calls and then having to be transported across town and after hours to another repair shop. Another hour or so was able to put in place a temporary switch until I got home. Originally was supposed to be there by noon ready to visit family but instead did not happen until after eight o'clock that night. Surviving the week with a couple days of 110° was ready to reverse the process to return to Indiana. Because American Airlines uses super 80 aircraft the power chairs have to go in the bottom of the aircraft on their side which side they failed to ask me toward the sensitivity of my electronics the first time around! Using large size Saran wrap and ensuring they lay the chair down on the other side away from the electronics. Only they have them destroy another switch on my control tube which was custom made by my friend for my air horns! The airline manager got everything pay for that day and after my local repair shop figures out what they destroyed the airline is also paying for that. So two broken switches later I thought they were picking on my chair today and my local repair shop did not think they only had one day to repair or diagnose what was wrong with my chair. I was already scheduled for tire replacement which the rear tires I go through in less than six months. Any repair shop taking more than a few days is absolutely ridiculous and not understanding the need for our equipment. Besides the chair problems I came home to computer problems and crashed Windows Vista ultimate and now running Windows 7 ultimate with Dragon 10.0 64-bit edition. Which is working out pretty good for the moment except for some screen resolution issues and sorry about the length of this post but just thought very informative to other individuals in our situation. Monty of Indiana c3/c4 nearly 17 years post injury
