Orthopaedic appliance and rehabilitation guidance centre · Consultation & fitment of orthotics, prosthetics and mobility aids · Kalyan West since 2006
Mobility aids
The right chair is the one that fits the doorway.
A wheelchair that cannot get into the bathroom is furniture. Most of what goes wrong with mobility equipment is not the equipment — it is that nobody measured the house.
What is stocked and fitted
Wheelchairs
Walking frames & rollators
Crutches
Walking sticks
Standing frames
Bathroom & bedside
What gets measured before a wheelchair is chosen
Ten minutes of this saves a purchase that gets used twice and then stands in the corridor.
- ✓Seat width — a chair too wide is as bad as one too narrow
- ✓Seat depth and height, against the person’s own leg length
- ✓Whether they will push themselves or be pushed
- ✓Doorway widths at home, and the bathroom door in particular
- ✓Steps at the entrance, and whether there is anywhere to turn
- ✓Who lifts it into the vehicle, and whether they can
A note about giving up walking
Families often resist a wheelchair because it feels like a defeat, and then the person stops going out at all. In practice the chair is usually what restores the outings — to the temple, to a wedding, to the doctor — for somebody who could manage the room but not the distance. Used for the long stretches and not for the short ones, it protects walking rather than replacing it.
The opposite mistake is just as common: a stick or a frame kept long after it has stopped being enough, because it was what the person was given first. If somebody is holding furniture to cross a room, the aid is no longer doing its job.
Bring the measurements of the house
Doorway widths, the height of the entrance step, and whether the bathroom door opens in or out. Photographs on a phone are perfectly good.
5, Jasraj Society, Vallipir Road, Kalyan (West), Thane — 421301 · Closed Saturday · Closed 2–6 p.m. on weekdays