A Few Of My Favorite Things - Part 8: Hand Vac

REVISED BELOW - I HAVE A NEW FAVORITE VACUUM

Everybody makes a mess from time to time, and I'm no exception.  The other day, I spilled dry coffee grounds in my lap.  If you did that, it wouldn't land in your lap because you wouldn't be sitting down while working with coffee.  But if, for some reason, you were sitting down to make coffee, and you ended up with coffee grounds in your lap, you would stand up, and brush the mess onto the floor where it would be easy to sweep up.

Sweeping is not easy for me, and standing is much harder, so how to get rid of the mess?  Enter the 18 Volt Shark Cordless Handheld Vacuum.

In its natural environment

I did a bit of homework before buying this particular vacuum.  This one has very good suction power, so it makes very quick work of the lap coffee, and the powered brush attachment helps if I get the coffee in the carpet.  It has a couple other attachments that I haven't used yet, but that will probably be useful one day.  Critically, it has a very convenient charging station that can mount to the wall, and holds all the attachments.  I put mine in the laundry room where it is within reach, but otherwise completely out of the way.

I haven't used my cordless hand vac too many times yet, but I like knowing it's there in case I need to collect some wayward M&Ms, clean up after a preschooler who eats like a defective wood-chipper, or perform a hands-free scary bug removal.



REVISED 8/24/2019

I haven't looked at this blog in 4 years, but I wanted to update this entry since I fell out of love with the Shark, and fell deeply in love with the Dyson cordless vacuum line.

I have 2 different models.  Of the two, I prefer the V7 which is the newer one.  I suspect any model would do the job although I think they get heavier as they get newer which might make them more difficult to handle.

This vacuum is smaller and lighter than the Shark, and the shape does a better job staying on my lap for transport.  I found the Shark tended to roll around as it wasn't really flat on the bottom.  I lay the Dyson on its side on my lap and it stays put, plus I think the V7 is just as powerful as the shark if not moreso.

Dyson V7 Motorhead Cordless Stick Vacuum Cleaner

It comes with attachments which allow you to use it as a dustbuster or crevice vacuum.  I find it's excellent at vacuuming up bugs if that's something you enjoy as much as I do, and it does a pretty decent job on hard floors.  I don't use it on carpet much, but it would certainly be better than nothing.

A Few Of My Favorite Things - Part 7: WeMo Light Switch

There are a lot of weird problems that come with paralysis.  One of the ones I noticed very quickly after I came home from the hospital was turning off the light at night.

Getting in bed at night is non-trivial for a paraplegic, especially when they are new to it.  Transferring from the wheelchair to bed, or from bed to the wheelchair can be a bit hairy, especially in the dark.  When I first moved into this apartment, I was brand new to these transfers, and I did not feel comfortable doing them in the dark.  My solution was to have a night light running in my room all the time.  This solution was a compromise.  There was a little bit of light when I was doing my transfer, but not as much as I really wanted.  Then there was more light in the room while I was sleeping than I would really prefer.

Smart phones are fantastic.  I held out getting one for several years while some of my friends pressured me to get one.  Ultimately, I did get one, only about a year before my injury.  I don't know how I'd ever survive a spinal cord injury without one.

I use my phone for everything.  I use the alarm feature many times a day to remember to take pills, or to empty my bladder.  I use a grocery list app to share my grocery list with Gus so he can pick things up for me if he goes to the store.  I use several chat and email apps to stay in contact with my friends.  I use the camera to take pictures for the blog.  I use the calendar to keep track of doctor appointments and dinner dates with friends.  I use the contact list to keep track of all the doctors and therapists I've seen.  I use the IMDB app to find out what actors were in certain movies.  And now I use WeMo to turn my lights off at night.

The WeMo light switch, by Belkin, is a smart light switch that uses your home WiFi network to talk to your smart phone.

WeMo on the right

There's not a lot to say about it except that I love it.  I can now get in (or out) of bed with the lights on, and then turn them off (or on) when I'm ready using an app on my phone.  It may seem like a little thing, but it makes my life a LOT better.

Update (5/20/2014) - My friend, Ben Parees, wants credit for introducing me to the dorky world of home automation.  It's true.  He did.  Thanks, Ben!  If you run into him, ask him about his project to automate the opening and closing of his mini-blinds in correspondence with the position of the sun!

A Few Of My Favorite Things - Part 6: Reacher Grabbers

The world we live in is designed around people with functioning legs.  Spend one day in a wheelchair, and this fact becomes painfully obvious.

I live alone, and if I need to reach something that is either too high, or too low, I have to use a reacher grabber.  I don't especially like having to rely on a fancy tool for something so simple, but I don't really have any other options.

I have an assortment of grabbers, and each is useful in its own way.

My collection

If I could have only one, it would be the Duro-Med 26-inch.  This is the one they recommended when I was in rehab.  It has decent grip strength, and it has excellent precision.  If you drop a pill under the table, this is the grabber you want.

Duro-Med 26"

I own four of these that I keep in different rooms.  In rehab, I remember them specifically saying this one was good if you want to grab a cloth to wipe something up on the floor.  I haven't tried it yet, but that's probably true.  I keep one in the bathroom to help flush the toilet since I can't get my chair close to the handle, or to pick things up if I drop them in the shower.  I keep one near my bed, and when the HO was keeping me from reaching my feet, I used it to help put pants on.

This grabber is also somewhat effective for pulling things down from high cabinet shelves in the kitchen.  My strategy for managing my kitchen space is that I keep just about everything that I use every day on the counter where I can reach it.  My kitchen is very small, and I can't afford to waste any space, so some things that I don't use daily have to go in the upper cabinets.  I have my friends put things up there when they come.  Extra food has to go up there sometimes, so when I need it, I just use a grabber to pull it down.  Most of the time that means pulling it off the front of the shelf, and either catching it, or letting it hit the counter.  I try to put durable foods up there.  Putting anything back up on a shelf is tricky at best.

The grabber I use more often for pulling things off shelves is the Unger 32-inch.  It has a longer reach than the Duro-Med so it can reach things on higher shelves, and the jaws open a lot wider so it can grab larger things.  The inside of the jaws also have a rubberized cover, so it has a chance of gripping a bottle.  The head can also turn 90 degrees which is convenient for grabbing vertical boxes.

Unger 32" and PikStik 20"

The problem with the Unger is that it does not have very good grip strength.  If it did, it would be much more useful.  Once I pull a box of cookies off the shelf, the odds that the Unger can hold it for a graceful landing are very low.  For that reason, that's about the only thing this grabber is good for, but sometimes it's the right tool for that job.

The jaws of the Unger aren't very precise, so it wouldn't be good for picking up a pill, but another issue is that it's just too long.  It's hard to appreciate until you try it, but using a grabber that is too long is very awkward.  One reason the 26" Duro-Med is so useful is that it's a very convenient length, but sometimes you want something even shorter.

The PikStick 20-inch is such a grabber.  I'd say this is my least useful grabber, and I haven't really used it much.  I bought it to use to help with putting on pants, and I think it would have been perfect for that job, but I stopped needing a grabber for that at about the same time it arrived.  Its head turns 90 degrees like the Unger, but I'm not sure if that's a useful feature for a grabber this small.  Its grip strength is also not very good.  It might be weaker than the Unger, so if I were to give up one of these grabbers, it would be this one.

A grabber that I would NOT want to give up is the Grappler 33-inch.  My aunt sent me this when I first came home from rehab, and it took me a while to appreciate its usefulness.  It's a little bit heavy which makes it a little bit clumsy to operate, but it has incredible grip strength.  It's also the longest grabber I have, so if there is something up high, and I want to have a reasonable chance of not dropping it, this is the grabber I want.

Grappler 33"

It was designed as a trash pick-up tool, and it's made almost entirely from steel so it's super strong.  The jaws also open much wider than any of the other grabbers so it will pick up things they won't.  The jaw tips have rubber booties on them so it has reasonable "gription" as Gus likes to say.  Most recently, I used it to take down my wall clock which is well out of reach so I could replace the battery.  I also was able use it to put the clock back up.  None of my other grabbers could come close to doing that.

At this point, I feel like my grabber collection is just about complete, but the Grappler is so impressive, I am considering buying the 24-inch version as well.  That would give me a smaller, lighter option for those times when heavy or large things aren't quite as high up or as far away.  After that, I think I will have a reacher grabber for every situation.

A Few Of My Favorite Things - Part 5: Door Pulls

Going in and out of doors is an important part of life that everyone does many times a day.  You probably don't give it any thought, but if you rely on a wheelchair for your transportation, you know every door can be a challenge.

When negotiating a door, you almost always have to operate the door with one hand while you maneuver the wheelchair with the other. Driving a manual wheelchair with one hand is challenging.  Doing it while leaning out of your chair to reach the door handle with the other hand will make you question how badly you really need to leave the room.  Add in any additional complications like a spring-loaded door closer, a bumpy threshold, or a fragile item on your lap that needs to go with you, and the profanity will start to flow.

For a lot of the doors out in the world, there is nothing I can do.  They suck and that's that.  But for the doors in my apartment that I use every single day, there are options.

I got this idea from something I saw in a video by this guy.  He has done lots of really helpful YouTube videos about how he manages his paralysis; if you're recently paralyzed, you should check him out.  I was watching one of his videos, and I noticed something in the background.  He had a handle mounted to a door near the hinge that he could use to pull the door closed behind him.

One of my biggest door-related annoyances in my apartment is that whenever I leave, I have to go out, turn completely around, roll back across the threshold, grab the door handle with one hand while backing myself across the bumpy threshold with the other, trying not to hit the wheelchair with the door as I do it.  It's awkward and difficult and annoying.  If I'm taking something out with me, I have to take it off my lap since it will probably fall off my lap while I'm closing the door.

When I saw it in the video, I immediately recognized how nice it would be to have a handle on the door that I could reach from outside without rolling back in.  The guy in the video (I don't know his name) used what looked like a drawer pull for his handle, but I know he owns his house so he probably just drilled mounting holes in the door to attach the handle.  I rent an apartment, so that's not really an option for me.  Fortunately, I'm a problem solver.

 I bought a drawer pull that mounts using #6 screws inserted from behind, like this one.  The screws that came with it wouldn't work for my purposes, so I had to buy some flat head machine screws that would fit, like these.  Then I got some 1/8" x 1" aluminum bar stock to mount the handle to.  Before my injury, I could have done this myself in my garage, but I had to get a friend to do it for me.  He cut the bar about 2 inches longer than the handle.  He drilled two mounting holes in the aluminum, and countersunk them so the screw heads would sit flush.  He cleaned up the rough edges, and assembled the whole thing together.

Looks like this

Now I had a handle mounted to a plate that was perfectly flat on the back.  I use a product called Command Hooks all over my apartment to attach things to walls with adhesive stickers that are strong, but removable.  I borrowed 4 of the small command strips to mount the handle to the door.

The finished product

I put one on the front door, and one on the door to my balcony.  Now when I go out, I just have to turn slightly, grab the handle and pull.  It works ridiculously well, and when I move out of this apartment, I'll just pull the tabs on the command strips, and it will come right off.  At least that's the theory.

The one on the balcony door

What it looks like on the back

It seems like a little thing, but it really makes my life a lot better.  I smile every time I use it.

A Few Of My Favorite Things - Part 4: Prefo Boots

If you are paralyzed, one of the things that will happen to you is foot drop.  Since you aren't walking or standing, over time, your calves will shorten, and your feet will start to point down.  To combat this, you may sleep in a prefo boot.

My first prefo boot was given to me after my very first surgery.  It has a rigid frame, and it holds your ankle at a 90 degree angle.  In the hospital, I would wear it on one foot at a time while I was in bed to try to keep my calf stretched.

The other purpose of the boot is to keep pressure off your heel.  This became especially important for me when I got that horrible pressure sore on my right heel.  In order to get that wound to heal, I had to wear a prefo boot all the time.

What I have discovered about prefo boots is that they are not all created equal.  When I was at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, they gave me one made by DeRoyal.  This was a pretty nice boot, and much nicer than the one they gave me at UNC.  I ended up buying a second one, and using them all the time when my heel had that wound.

Later, I discovered another brand of boot that is much nicer than the DeRoyal, and I now own two of them.  If you need to use prefo boots, I strongly recommend the one made by LEEDer Group.  It has higher build quality, it seems more comfortable, and is generally more secure than any of the others I've seen.

One of my LEEDer boots

They call it the KYDEX-PRO Ambulation Boot Orthosis.  This type of boot is also known as a "heel contracture boot".  The one by LEEDer is also adjustable if the frame needs to be a slightly different shape.

Another thing I like about this particular boot is that the kick-stand is more secure than the others I've used.  These boots have an arm built into the back of the boot that can fold out to keep your foot upright when you're sleeping on your back.  I never use the arm, but on some of the other boots, the arm will flop out to the side when you don't want it to.  That's not a problem on these.  The arm snaps to the center securely, and it is hidden by the boot cover so you don't see it.  Also a unique feature of these boots.

If you have to pay for them yourself, these boots are also cheaper than the DeRoyals, and I think they're American made, but I'm too lazy to look that up.

I spent several months wearing these things against my skin at a time when I wasn't able to wash my feet, so they got pretty nasty.  I bought some spare covers for them so I can swap them out and wash the liners.  Swapping liners isn't the easiest thing in the world, but at least you can wash and/or replace every piece of fabric on them. 

They are a little bit heavier than the other prefo boots I've used, but I think that is a result of the quality.  They make it a bit more difficult to throw your legs around, but I think the tradeoff is worth it.

If I ever have to buy another prefo boot, which is doubtful because these will probably last forever, it will be from LEEDer Group.

A Few Of My Favorite Things - Part 3: Floor Mirror

The third in my series of favorite apartment mods was actually an accident.  When my friends put my dresser in my bedroom closet, the attached mirror wouldn't fit.  Not knowing what to do with it, they leaned it against the wall in my bedroom, just outside the closet.  I use it every day.

My floor mirror

When my flexibility was seriously impacted by the HO, I was unable to lean forward, and I couldn't see my feet at all.  Even in bed, I couldn't get close to them.  If I needed to see them for any reason, I had to use the floor mirror.

I really only use that mirror to check on my feet, or sometimes to look at things on the bottom of my wheelchair, but it's the only place in my apartment where I can do that.

I've used it to check on foot injuries, and I've used repeatedly with bare feet to make sure my feet are situated on the footrest such that they aren't dragging on the carpet.  That's a bigger issue than you may realize - if my toes are dragging on the carpet wrong, they could get dragged under and injured badly.

The view from in front

I used it once to figure out that something was stuck in my front caster.  It's just a nice thing to have around.

A Few Of My Favorite Things - Part 2: Furniture Risers

This will be a short post about a short problem.  Namely, some of my furniture was shorter than I wanted it to be.

When I first moved to this apartment, I already owned a table and a couch.  I had a lot of expenses at the time, and I didn't want to buy new furniture.

I spend a lot of time at the dining room table, and that table was just a little bit lower than I needed.  The edge of the table would scrape my thighs when I rolled under.  The simple solution was to put risers under the legs.

There are products on the market that do the same job, but Gus fabricated mine.  For the table, he used pieces of 2x4 cut square.  He then cut a piece of 1/2" plywood that fit on top.  He used a hole saw to cut a circle out of the plywood that fits around the table leg.  This keeps the leg from falling off the block.  He attached the plywood to the 2x4 with some wood screws, and spray painted the whole thing black to look nice.

One table riser

This raises the table up about and inch and a half.  Exactly what I need.

The end result

The other piece of furniture that required lifting was my couch.  The problem I had with the couch was that it was very difficult to transfer off the couch back into the wheelchair.  It was just a huge step up to do that transfer, and especially when the HO was still a problem, that just wasn't easy.

We did the same thing for the couch legs, but we used 2x6 for the base, and 2 layers of 3/4" plywood on top.  The first layer is to add extra height to the couch, and the top layer has the hole cut to make sure the leg doesn't fall off.  We used a pretty large hole saw for this one.  I think it was about 2-1/2", but any size larger than the couch leg would have been fine.  We made this one wider because it was taller, and we didn't want it to be unstable.

The couch riser

This is another modification that I take for granted, but I can't imagine living here without it.

A Few Of My Favorite Things - Part 1: Towel Holder

It's hard to believe, but I've lived in this apartment by myself for almost two years.  In that time, I have made a lot of changes that have made my life easier.  If you have visited me, you've probably seen a lot of them, but I've wanted to write about them for a long time.  This information might help somebody else one day, so I want to share it.

I'm going to do a series of posts about things that help me out on a daily basis, and I'm going to start with one that I first mentioned shortly after I moved in.

If you live in a wheelchair, and you want to wash your hands, the first thing you need to do is get close enough to the sink to reach the water.  That's not always easy.  If you're in a normal kitchen, the cabinets will probably keep you from getting very close.  When I visit Gus's house, I generally have to either pull up to the sink sideways and try to wash one hand at a time, or have somebody hold the sprayer close to the front of the sink where I can barely reach.

Fortunately, in my apartment, the cabinets under the sink have been removed so I can roll my legs up under the sink and actually reach the faucet.  That's great, but after my hands are clean, they remain wet.  How can I dry them off?  I could wipe them on my pants I suppose, but if I don't want to do that, I have to find a towel.  In a normal kitchen, there is probably a towel hanging on the stove door.  If my legs worked, I would just walk over there and grab it.

Unfortunately, my legs don't work, so I have to push my dirty wheels with my wet hands.  Now my wheels are wet, and my hands are dirty before I even get them dry.  Once dry my hands, the wheels are still wet, and my hands are going to get wet as soon as I push them again.

My solution to this problem is one that Gus came up with shortly after I moved here.

The towel holder in my kitchen

He mounted a bar just under the front edge of the sink where we can hang a towel.  When I roll under the sink, my legs hit the towel, and that would normally knock it off, so we have a mechanism that clips the towel to the bar so it won't fall off.

The mounting hardware

We used a small piece of 1" oak board to create a spacer and a place to mount the pipe bracket.  The pipe is 1/2" copper although I suspect steel would work just as well.  Copper looks nicer.

To secure the towel, we used a part from a SharkBite universal pipe fitting.  It's just the half inch disconnect clip.

Available at Home Depot

I'm sure there are other ways to solve this problem.  You could mount a hook just to the side of the sink, but this is how we solved it, and I'm extremely happy with the result.

We made the same mod in the bathroom.

Also helpful here

Lap Tray

I write this blog mostly for my friends and family to keep them updated on my progress so I don't have to field constant questions from everyone I know.  I do it because I'm lazy.

But recently, I've been contacted by a couple paras who are interested in things I might know.  And in the year and a half that I've been doing this, I've learned a few things that might be helpful to other people, so from time to time I'm going to write about them.  If you know me, you already know about most of this stuff, so feel free to skip these if you want.  You won't miss much.

When I was in rehab, my OT (Raheleh, if you're a long-time reader) was pretty adamant that I should avoid using tools whenever possible.  I think her attitude was that if I learn to do something by using a tool, it will be very difficult to ever learn to do that thing without that tool.  The less tools you need, the more independent you'll be.

I think that's a good theory, and I agree with it in principle, but tool use is what separates us from the animals, and our entire society is built on the use of tools, so why shouldn't we participate?  We should, and I do.

The tool I use far more than any other is my lap tray.  I literally do not know how I could survive without it.  I suspect I would starve to death.

The reality of being in a manual wheelchair is that you need both hands to move.  If you're holding something in one hand, the most you can hope to do is go in a circle.  Realistically, you can't even go a few feet holding one thing.  If that thing is easily spillable, or if, God forbid, you have TWO things, you're completely stuck.  And don't even get me started about slight inclines.

So if you want to move anything from one place to another, you have to put it in the only place available to you: your lap.  This is okay if the thing you're transporting is not easily spilled.  A closed water bottle can be braced between your thighs, but remember that you cannot use your thighs to squeeze the item, nor can you feel when it starts to fall over, so this can still be tricky.  And what if the item is hot and spillable?  This would be extremely dangerous with an open mug of hot coffee.

What if you want to move a plate of food?  You might be able to balance the plate on one of your thighs, but that's going to be pretty precarious, and your thigh is pretty slippery.  What if the plate is hot?  What if your thighs aren't level?

Depending on how you sit in your wheelchair, your thighs may slope forward or back.  Due to my HO, for a long time I couldn't sit upright in my chair, and I was slouched down.  My thighs sloped down toward the knee fairly dramatically, so anything I put on my lap would slide immediately onto the floor.

These are very serious problems that you never think about until you get yourself paralyzed.  So how do we solve it?  My solution is a lap tray.

I developed my solution over several months with help from Gus.  I will spare you the design progression.  I think it's interesting, but this post is already pretty long.  I'm not sure the tray is perfect yet, but it's pretty good.

The finished product

I wanted something with sides that were tall to help prevent things from falling off, and that could contain a small spill if one occurred in transit.  I found a tray I liked at Target, but the top surface was slippery, and anything I put on it would slide all over the place.  Because my lap was sloped downward, that meant it would slide to the front of the tray and cause the tray to fall off my lap.  The bottom of the tray was also quite slippery, so the whole tray slid off my lap quite easily.

To solve the first problem, I sanded the top surface of the tray with 400 grit sandpaper and then sprayed it with a product called Plasti Dip.  It's a rubberized coating that you spray on tool handles to protect them and make them grippy.  You can get it at the hardware store near the spray paint I believe.  This created a nice smooth grippy surface that dishes won't slide on.  It's also pretty easy to wipe up.

Some of the things I used to modify my lap tray

Next, I needed to level the tray on my lap.  I did this with shim sticks.  Gus actually made them for me.  At most major hardware stores, you can buy fancy poplar boards 2-1/2" inches wide in a variety of thicknesses from 1/4" up to 1".  Gus used these to create a selection of shim sticks for me so I can change them out to adjust the angle of the tray.  This was especially important when the HO was bad because I slouched down in the chair a different amount on different days.  We cut the boards 15" long, and made them out of poplar because it's lightweight.  Gus sanded them and put a couple coats of polyurethane on them to keep me from getting splinters.  He also stained them to make them look pretty.

I only really use the first 3 or 4 sizes between 1/4" and 1" thick

The finished boards will level the tray, but they are still pretty slippery, so I used some self-adhesive rubber weather stripping to create a grip strip on each board that won't slide on my leg.  I don't trust the adhesive on the strips so I also hit each strip with a staple gun to make sure it can't fall off.

I attach the boards to the bottom of the tray using industrial strength Velcro.  I used to use this stuff to attach my lap timer to my race motorcycle, and it is STRONG.  You can get it at a hardware store or probably Walmart.

Put the soft side of the velcro on the tray so it doesn't stick to your pants if you don't use a shim stick

The only thing I'm not crazy about on the tray is the Plasti Dip coating on the inside.  It nicks easily and will start to peel off in sections.  It's really not much of a problem, and when it gets bad enough, you can just peel the rest off and respray.  It peels off pretty easily if you pick at it.  I would prefer a more permanent solution, but this works well enough until I think of something better.

So that's my tray.  It's how I get food from the kitchen to the dining room every day.  I love it and I honestly don't know what I'd do without it.