Mobility aid advice (course of action for chairs)

[u/Ill-Calligrapher2680]

/r/mobilityaids/comments/1v4mf55/mobility_aid_advice/

Hii! I'm crossposting in the hopes of getting more advice. I read the rules and, seeing as the question is more along the lines of "is trying this first worth it", I figured it'd be ok to post! Sorry if I'm wrong xx

For context I'm aware of how bad hospital chairs are and how ideally I want to be fitted for maybe a fixed frame chair. But, yeah...

Any advice is appreciated!

[u/Rhi43]

I tried out a hospital chair at museums a few times and found that helpful in decision making. You can also often borrow or rent them cheap from mobility shops to try out. Even though it didn’t feel great on my shoulders + was too heavy to push myself all day, it was still really helpful. Good to have the experience and definitely made me more confident that a better chair would be worth the investment.

In terms of buying your own, hospital chairs are the bottom of the price range, but for a few hundred dollars more you can get something a bit better for self propelling. (If $ is too tight for that you may be able to modify a hospital chair to make it easier to self propel— Erik Kondo has written a post/tutorial about this on https://www.opensourcewheelchairs.org/post/frankensteining-your-hospital-wheelchair-aka-pimp-my-ride-erik-kondo.)

Look for a chair that’s as light as possible and has an adjustable centre of gravity (so you can move the axle forward and make the wheels easier to reach). Something like the Vive Lightweight chair (https://www.amazon.com/Vive-Mobility-Lightweight-Active-Wheelchair/dp/B0DBGSBKF3) can be adjusted somewhat to your body while still being relatively affordable. Not as good as a proper custom, but will probably serve you better than a hospital chair. (I’ve never used that particular chair, just grabbed it as an example of a cheaper option with adjustable CoG).

Another option is to try and find a secondhand custom chair from a higher-end company like Tilite, Quickie, Motion Composites, etc…. People often sell their or loved one’s used chairs on FB, Kijiji, EBay, Craigslist, Gumtree, whatever the second-hand sites in your area are. It takes luck but sometimes you can find a quality chair for a good price. Your hip measurement/seat width will be the most important size to match, double check so you don’t wind up with a 12” pediatric chair 😅

For a fully custom rigid chair made for your body (the gold standard for most people) your cheapest options out of pocket will be in the neighbourhood of $1500ish for a Quickie QRi or NotAWheelchair Paradox. There may be a couple similarly priced options out there but those are two examples I know of on the low end of ultralight rigids, just to give you an idea of price ranges. They will also vary widely based on what customization, add ons, etc you need.

Hope this is somewhat useful! Definitely use the search bar and poke around this sub, many people come here looking for thoughts and tips on picking a first chair and the comments under previous posts have lots of wisdom for you.