Well, if it never happens, then why does it seem to happen to us!!!!
As Amelia is getting bigger, it is just getting harder to help her with getting around. Yes, I still carry her a lot- but she is heavy!!! Despite only being about 35 pounds, the limited way that she can support herself make her really heavy. I am trying to encourage her to crawl around the house more and also use her wheelchair more at home. One of the obstacles with the chair is stairs, of course. Well, when we come across stairs without a ramp available, we turn her around and kind of "bump" her up or down the stairs. This actually works pretty well, but the chair with her in it is about 77 pounds (not to mention we almost always have a loaded backpack on the chair). When there are more than a few steps, I am always a little nervous about falling or dropping her. Up until Sunday night, this had never happened.
So, Sunday night we went to our neighbor's house to watch the Superbowl and eat lots of food. We had a blast, as usual. On a side note, they have a crazy dog that loves to play with all the kids. As he was chasing the girls around, he grabbed Hannah's dress and ripped the skirt off in the back (we were all laughing hysterically). After the dress incident, the girls were really wound up so we knew it was time to head home. We head out their front door and I have Amelia in her wheelchair and a small bag on my shoulder. They have maybe 6 steps to go down from their front porch. Steven was already on the sidewalk with Hannah and our crock-pot full of chili. As we start going down, everything is fine, but then with about 2 steps to go me and the chair (with Amelia in it) start to fall. The chair turned to it's right side as it fell down the two steps. I landed on my right knee-it got bruised and scraped. It was like it all happened in slow motion. Steven ran over and grabbed the chair up as fast as he could. Amelia was absolutely terrified!!!! Amazingly, she did not even have one scratch or bruise. She did cry for 30 minutes nonstop afterwards. As we all start to look more closely at the wheelchair, we realize that one of the bolts that holds the wheel assembly in place was broken into 2 pieces. So, her wheelchair was unusable at that point.
Yesterday, we took the chair to get it repaired and the vendor told me that he had NEVER seen a bolt break like that (of course not). After looking at the chair, he noticed that the top bolt of that wheel assembly was loose, which probably caused the lower bolt to break with the pressure from going down the stairs. So, he thinks the bolt broke, which affected the balance of the chair, which then caused us to fall!!!
I have not been happy with this chair- ever, so I really can't wait until her new chair comes. We are in the process of waiting on insurance approval for her new chair (she is getting a Zippie Zone). The new chair will probably only weigh about 20 pounds (versus her current chair at 42 pounds). So now, after the bolt breaking fall- the new chair can't get here fast enough!!!
Since we seem to have had a lot of things that "never happen", happen to us lately I will share a few of those stories over the next few posts.
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