Stretched to the Breaking Point

The title doesn't refer to my psyche, but to Maggie's chair. Her wheelchair is once again in need of attention and repair. She can use it, but it is tattered and sad.  The parts were ordered eons ago and we are waiting and waiting and waiting for them to be delivered and installed. In this day of overnight delivery and immediate attention, it blows my mind that these parts take three months to get.

The most unsightly part of the repair is the fabric behind Maggie’s legs that is designed to help Maggie  keep her feet in place. This neoprene fabric  is stretched behind Maggie’s legs to keep her feet from dangling in space.  It is supposed to look something like this.  

Maggie tends to use it to rest her feet and the tone in her legs is so high that she exerts constant pressure on this fabric. Surprise surprise, she wore a hole in it.  The new one was ordered llong ago and they forgot about it. It was ordered again on the 1^st of March and now, 64 days later, we still don’t have it. That little hole got bigger and bigger. We turned the neoprene upside down so that the pressure would be on another part of the fabric, but that seemed only to exacerbate the problem. Now there is a gaping  hole all the way across the cihair. Maggie sticks her feet through it and looks like an amputee. They sent me this picture from school today.

We could just take it off, but even in its tattered state it is providing some protection for Maggie. When she sticks her legs through she is not keeping her feet in the right position, but the fabric is still between her legs and the footplates of the chair. Without the fabric, her legs would be behind the metal footplates and she would injure her shins on those sharp metal edges.  

But she looks like someone down on their luck hustling for handouts on the street.

Hmmm. Maybe she could earn her allowance.

Or she could contribute to her shoe fund.  A lot of shoes drop through that black hole.   The shoe story will follow.