A New Seating System Coming Soon!

We took Annie up to the hospital yesterday to have a wheelchair evaluation with the physical therapist and durable medical equipment supplier.  Annie's had her current chair for 4 years now and she is quickly outgrowing it.  We went to this appointment anticipating being able to design and order a new chair for her.  However, after the DME supplier checked her chair more closely, he's discovered that the chair frame actually still has a couple inches of growth.  The seating system, however, does not. 

So we will keep this frame for 6-12 more months, but we did order a new seating system for her to go in this same frame.  Her back cushion will now be contoured to provide more distributed lateral support to help with her worsening scoliosis.  Her bottom cushion will be about the same as before, except it will better accommodate her two different leg lengths to give equal support to each leg.  They are also ordering longer extenders for her foot plates to allow them to be adjusted lower for her long legs.  We also ordered a foot plate ledge to prevent Annie's feet from falling back behind her foot plates and then getting cut when she has a seizure.  She'll also get new foot plate covers since she's worn her's through, and a new butterfly harness since we took her current one from her standing frame to use on her chair.  They agreed we shouldn't have to use safety pins on chest harnesses like we've had to do.

I'm excited to get a new seating system to help Annie be more comfortable.  It will be nice to try out some of these new features on this old frame so when we do order a whole new chair we'll know what we like and what we don't.  Because insurance approval is an incredibly slow process, and our private insurance must decide how much, if any, they will cover before it is then sent to Medicaid, we don't anticipate receiving these new parts for her chair for about 3 months.  Which is not too bad considering it usually takes 4-6 months for a whole new wheelchair!

This is a picture of Annie on the day we first received her Quickie Zippie IRIS when she was just 4.  (Her first wheelchair was a KidKart Xpress that she used from 1-4 years old.)  It's amazing we ever had this chair adjusted so small!