Great event this Saturday

Hi, I know I haven't checked in for a long time, but I wanted to let everyone know about a great event happening in Toronto.

On Saturday, Dec. 5 from 10am to 4pm the 1st Forum For Hispanic People with Disabilities is happening at the North York Civic Center, 5100 Yonge Street. The venue is wheelchair accessible, and the opening ceremony will have the Honorable David C. Onley (Ontario's Lieutenant-Governor) as a keynote speaker.

This forum will address the reality, needs and contributions of people with disabilities, and everyone is welcome. It will be conducted in both Spanish and English, and it's the first event of its kind in Toronto's Latino community. Disability is definitely part of diversity, and I'm really happy that this event is happening. I'll try to be there, and I hope some of you will be too. Peace.

P.S. The forum is put on by San Lorenzo, a community center dedicated to the empowerment and development of the Hispanic community, supporting newcomers from all over Latin America and helping them transition to life in Toronto. San Lorenzo is also dedicated to working towards creating harmonious relationships with diverse communities. Albeit Latino in flavor, San Lorenzo also welcomes many non-Latinos into its heart.

San Lorenzo also has its own Spanish-language radio station, Radio Voces Latinas on 1610AM. ¡Qué bueno!

The State of Assistive Technology – The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

If you read my last blog post you know that in June the Tetra Society of North America held a forum to address the issues surrounding assistive technology, especially in the province of Ontario. For everyone who’s unfamiliar with this term, "assistive technology" or AT refers to any device including software or hardware – high-tech or low-tech – that helps people with disabilities to live life as fully as possible. Assistive technology can include mobility aids, devices to help with other basic daily activities, or software and hardware that helps people to access their computer.

At the forum Tetra heard from a variety of people who use assistive technology, as well as family members of AT users, people working in the disability field, and AT manufacturers. After the forum, Tetra put together a report on the major issues that were discussed that day, and it’s been sent to a wide range of people, including journalists and government officials. If you’re interested in reading this report here are two links where you can check it out.
http://tr.im/uCi4 – this is the original report in PDF format.
http://tr.im/uCiA – this is a large-print, sans-serif version the same report in PDF format.
Enjoy!

2 Great Upcoming Events In Toronto

If you live in the Greater Toronto Area and you have a disability or know someone with a disability, here are 2 great events you’ll want to mark on your calendar.

People In Motion - June 5 and June 6, 10am-5pm:
People In Motion is Canada's premier exhibit for people with disabilities, seniors with special needs, and professionals working in related fields. People in Motion features 63,000 square feet of exhibits including adapted vehicles, mobility aids, barrier-free design, rehabilitation services, home health care products, accessible travel, leisure activities, technical aids, employment info, corporate services and government programs. Everything for a wide range of needs is displayed under one roof, making it easy for consumers and professionals to see and compare products and services. People in Motion is for you!

Date: Friday, June 5 and Saturday June 6, 2009
Time: 10:00am to 5:00pm (both days)
Location: Queen Elizabeth Building, Canadian Exhibition Place
Admission: Free
For more info please visit www.people-in-motion.com.

Tetra Society’s Assistive Technology Forum - June 18, 9am-1:30pm:
The Tetra Society of North America is a volunteer organization dedicated to designing and building assistive devices and adaptations for people with disabilities. As a Tetra volunteer I’m really happy to tell you that on June 18 we’re holding an Assistive Technology Forum that will bring together Tetra volunteers, people with disabilities, clinicians and others working in the disability field to discuss issues, gaps and challenges with assistive technology, and share ideas on how we can collaborate to make a difference. At this forum:
• there will be an opening presentation by Rick Ball, who just set the world record for single-leg amputee runners at the Boston Marathon
• I’ll be one of the 4 members on an interactive panel discussing gaps and other issues with assistive technology
• we’ll have talks and small-group discussions where people can discuss their experiences with assistive devices, and where we can hopefully brainstorm about possible solutions to existing problems
• during lunch we'll hear from the Honorable David C. Onley, Ontario's first Lieutenant-Governor with a disability.

Date: Thursday, June 18, 2009
Time: 9:00am to 1:30pm
Location: CNIB at 1929 Bayview Avenue, Room 124/126
Admission is free but you must register.
To register or to get more info please visit www.tetragta.org/index.php/Events/ATForum2009.

New Year’s Resolutions? Bah Humbug!

Well, it’s the start of a new year, and let’s hope that in 2009 we’ll see some positive stuff happening – in our own lives, our communities, or in the world at large. Yeah, I know this last one sounds pretty grandiose and naive, but a girl can dream, can’t she?

Every year we all hope for the same stuff, and a lot of us make resolutions to improve ourselves. This is great – there’s absolutely nothing wrong with trying to be the best person you can be. The problem is that some of us, or maybe a lot of us, fall off the wagon within a couple of months after making our New Year’s Resolutions. If this is you, don’t guilt-trip yourself yet.

I think part of the problem is that some of us make resolutions we can’t possibly stick to. If you’re a couch potato don’t resolve to lose 50 pounds or get yourself fit for the next marathon, and don’t fork over big bucks for a fitness club membership you may only use for a few months. Start small, maybe try to walk a little every day and then work your way up from there. I’m no fitness expert by any means, but why give yourself a heart attack or a financial headache when you don’t need to?

I’m not saying we should be lazy and quit trying to better ourselves, just that people should know their limits. And maybe once we reach our limits we can try to push them a little further. I’m sure we all have stuff we can improve, like our physical and mental fitness, the way we treat each other, or even our level of happiness. But no one has to make a New Year’s Resolution to do this. Why do we need the start of a new year to improve ourselves? Wouldn’t it be better if we all tried to do this every day? Anyway, enough of Maria’s Bitch Session – I resolve to keep my bitching more compact (or at least try to).

Yes We Can!

Well, I can’t believe it! I’m so happy we finally did it! Not only did America indisputably elect Barack Obama, a Black man, as its 44th president, but there was a record high turnout at the polls.

But I have to admit, I’m a conspiracy theorist. Especially after the sham election of 2000, where the Electoral College and the ballot machines conspired to give us Dubya as president #43 instead of the more popular Al Gore, I didn’t think there was a whole lot of hope for Obama. But I was very pleasantly proved wrong! I’m still a bit of a skeptic though. I find myself wondering if Obama really will change America for the better, or if he’ll go along with the party line instead of listening to the people and also thinking for himself. I don’t mean any disrespect to the brother, but it seems to me like a lot of times when we finally do get the person we want in office, that person changes direction and just goes along with the status quo instead of representing the people who elected him/her. Or even worse, the person elected gets corrupted or assassinated.

Now I know you’re probably thinking, "Come on Maria, you’re jinxing the guy!", and I definitely don’t mean to jinx him! I want him to stay safe, and I really hope Barack and his administration will help make a better life for the American people. I also hope he’ll change the way America interacts with and is seen by the rest of the world. If the outcome of this election and the extra-high voter turnout are anything to go by, I think he’ll be able to pull it off.

And speaking of the high voter turnout, if this is what a large number of people can do when they take interest in the electoral process and the government in general, what would happen if this many people kept coming out to vote at every election and kept pushing for change after elections? Even though I always vote I have to admit I’ve often thought my vote can’t really change anything. But after this election I’m starting to think we really can make a change.

New Chair!

OK, I know I haven’t posted anything since way back in August, when I told you about my problems with getting my wheelchair repaired and about the loaner chair that kept stopping on me. Well, that situation went on until the beginning of October, so my energy level’s been really low. But I thought I’d update you with the good news and the bad news.

I’ll start with the good news first. The good news is that I now have a brand new, squeaky clean Pronto M91 power wheelchair. It was just delivered today and the service technician made most of the adjustments I needed. There are still a couple mor tweaks needed, but those will be done this Friday. This chair is pretty much like my original Pronto M91, but with a couple of great upgrades. So I’m really happy about that.

Now for the bad news. Why do I have a brand new chair instead of my original 3-year-old chair?

Well, at the end of September I got a call saying my chair had finally been fixed and they’d bring it out the next day. So the next day I got a nasty shock when the service technician brought me an old chair that was really, really short. Now, I’m pretty short myself, but this chair was so short I knew right away it had to be someone else’s. When I got up close to feel the chair I knew for sure it wasn’t mine. The service technician called his boss to tell him it was the wrong chair, and his boss told him that was the chair they had on file for me. Later that afternoon the boss’s boss called me and said the same thing. Since back in March when my own chair was brought in for repairs, they’d been thinking my chair was a Quantum 6000 instead of my Pronto M91. (And if you’ve read my previous post you probably saw this coming just like I did.)

In the meantime I was still stuck with a loaner chair that kept stalling on me. Although my service provider had tried to fix this loaner chair in August they couldn’t find the problem, so they replaced the batteries, cleaned out the terminals, made a couple of minor adjustments and gave it back to me. But the chair still kept stalling. So at the end of September, with my mobility restricted and my energy level still really low, I wasn’t happy to hear that they couldn’t find my own chair at all. Yeah, that’s right, they lost my wheelchair, and after the 6 and a half months my chair was in limbo that’s not much of a surprise. I asked them again for a reliable loaner chair that wouldn’t stop dead on me in the middle of the road, and at this time a staff member at my community center also started calling them on my behalf. At the beginning of October I finally got a reliable loaner chair, which wasn’t too comfortable but did the job. It was such a relief to have a working chair again.

Earlier this month I wrote a letter to the CEO and vice-president of the company I’ve been dealing with. In this letter I gave a detailed chronological account of pretty much everything that had happened with my chair since March, as well as the impact this has had on me. I also requested that this company get me a brand new Pronto M91 chair from the manufacturer, not only because they lost or misplaced my own chair but also because of the excessive amount of time it took them to repair the wheelchair they thought was mine. I c.c.ed this letter to a journalist who’s known for her column on disability issues, and also said in the letter that I had the purchase invoice as well as a photo of me in my chair as evidence that the Pronto M91 was really my chair.

Unbelievably, within 2 days of sending the letter I got a call from the company. The person I spoke to was very nice, apologizing for the trouble I went through, and she said that the next day she’d work on getting me a brand new chair. She was true to her word, and the next day she went through the manufacturer’s order form with me over the phone. She said it would take about 2 weeks for the chair to come in, and now, after less than 2 weeks, I have my new chair. Whoo-hoo!

So, I guess I’ve learned something from my experience that I can pass on to other people. This is, if you have problems with a particular company it can help to go to the top. Not only go to the top, but make sure you have documentation like e-mails, invoices etc. If you don’t have concrete documentation, at least make detailed notes about what you’ve experienced, who you spoke to, when you spoke to them, what you told them and what they said. It helps to have a good, coherent chronological account of your issue, otherwise the company won’t have enough information to go on and may not take you seriously. If you write a letter to the bigwigs, it also helps to carbon copy the letter to a journalist you think might be interested in your issue, especially if you know other people have had similar problems.

Anyway, now that I have a comfortable, working set of wheels again, maybe I can start posting more stuff.

What If This Was Your Car?

OK, I know it’s been a couple months since I wrote something in here, but I’m finally back. My energy level’s been really low, especially since my wheelchair’s been out of commission.

Maybe I should tell you a little about my chair. I got an Invacare Pronto M91 power wheelchair in the beginning of 2005, and it was one of the best things that ever happened to me. Although I was born with my disabilities I’d never had a chair until then. Once I started using this chair I had a lot less pain and didn’t get tired so easily, and this allowed me to do a lot more than I could ever do before. The lateral supports on my chair gave me much better posture than I’d ever had, and this was a big positive in itself. I had a rocky start though, since bolts started falling off my new chair soon after I got it. But once that problem was fixed it was pretty smooth sailing for the next 3 years.

But this year, at the beginning of March, things started getting pretty weird. I was driving my chair one day and it started jumping. (Yeah, you’re probably thinking wheelchairs don’t jump, but it sure felt like that’s what mine was doing.) A few days after I called my service provider my chair died on me completely, and it was a week in total before they came out to my place with a loaner chair for me. The loaner chair they put together for me wasn’t the best fit for my needs, but I was still very happy to have a wheelchair again. Also, I figured I could handle the chair’s drawbacks for the few weeks it would take for my own chair to get fixed.

A few weeks??? Nah, try 4 months and counting! And I found out from my service provider that for at least 3 of these months my Pronto M91 hadn’t even been touched because of a backlog. Meanwhile, I was having more problems with my loaner chair. For the first 2-and-a-half weeks in June I had no wheelchair while the loaner was being repaired. At the end of July the chair started having more problems with the electronics, and it stopped dead on me in the street a couple of times. So it’s been in the repair shop for about a week, and I’m without a chair again. A few times I called to check on the status of my own chair, and was told a part was on backorder. I would have called them a lot more often than a few times, but I just didn’t have the energy.

For the past week I’ve been trying to find out the status of both chairs, and all the higher-ups I tried to contact were either out of the office or on vacation. Finally someone got back to me on Friday and said they’d try to have the chair back to me by Tuesday or Wednesday. When I asked whether he was talking about my own wheelchair or the loaner, the guy quoted me the model of the loaner and said this was my original chair. I corrected him and gave him the model of my Pronto M91 chair, letting him know it had been in their shop for 4 months. I waited while he checked for it in the system, only to hear that he couldn’t find it. After that I lost it. I was in tears when I told him how I’d been without a chair for a week, with no way to get groceries and do what I needed to do. He seemed sympathetic, saying he’d try to get the loaner back to me on Monday and that he’d check further into what happened to my own chair.

So I’m still in limbo with no idea when I’ll get a wheelchair, or where my own chair is. Now tell me, when you take your car to a mechanic does it take them 4 months to fix it? I’m guessing it doesn’t take that long, since most car owners have the physical energy to keep on the mechanic’s butt if the repair takes too long. What many people out there might not know is that the average power wheelchair costs as much as a car. So what would you do if your mechanic kept your $8,000+ car for 4 months or more? What would you do if you couldn’t get anywhere without that car and didn’t have supportive friends or family to help you out? What would you do in my shoes?

P.S.: a few days after I wrote this post I was told my Pronto M91 hasn't disappeared into the ether, but a part is still on backorder and I should have it back in another week.