♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet. ♪
- Hi folks.
I'm Bob Schrupp Physical Therapist,
- Brad Heineck, Physical Therapist.
- Together, we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion of course, Bob.
- Today Brad, we're gonna talk about,
13 things you should know about a wheelchair.
And you say, why would,
why should I know anything about a wheelchair?
- And why 13?
- Yeah, I don't know.
13 is like my lucky number.
But beyond that, Brad,
if you have to push somebody in a wheelchair,
let's say, it's your grandpa or grandma,
or maybe your mom or dad.
These are things you should know.
And I didn't think this was a big deal,
until I was just saw this the other day,
someone was pushing somebody in a wheelchair
and they were going off a curb,
and they were going head first.
I mean, that lady was gonna go tumbling down the road.
I went running over there and said,
"Hey, you back off the curb instead of going forward."
- Sure. A lot of these little things,
that can cause big problems.
- Big problems,
And we thought everybody knew, but they don't.
So that's the things we're gonna talk about today, Brad.
So, by the way, Brad,
we have a couple people that just wandered in.
- Wow, three of them.
- Yeah, thanks for joining us today.
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Brad's got a complex that he really,
is afraid that nobody likes him, so.
- Yeah, I'm working on that too.
My, my therapist is helping me out too.
- All right.
So let's talk about the first thing, Brad.
The first thing is,
if you are gonna go off a ramp,
or down a ramp, or off a curb,
you really wanna make sure that you back down.
So, and you know right now,
Brad, let's, let's go this way once here.
- Sure. I think the brakes are on.
- Yeah. So we're gonna turn this way.
So as, as I'm going down a curb or a ramp,
this is what can happen.
You gonna help me, Brad?
- Yep. Is very-
- Now, boom
- Here, let's do it from a profile,
You'll see, start leaning forward.
Cause people start to do that.
They see something and-
- Well off a curb, you're gonna be leaning forward.
- Right
- So ready.
- But it just,
and I'm not doing much at all and it's ready to-
- And I'll be falling and I won't be able to get up.
- Right, yeah.
And typically your head hits first.
- Yeah. So make sure that you just back off the curb.
And the way the tires are made, you can kind of hold
lift up the chair a little bit.
- Yep. You can go back here and you can,
you know get the weight of the backside,
and we don't have a curb here, but believe me, you work at-
and a lot of times, if you have a second person,
just to help the person, if you haven't done it before,
two able bodied people are the best.
- Why don't we?
So a lot of people don't even know,
if we're going up a bump Brad,
right now, let's head for this bump,
and don't, don't do what you're supposed to do.
- And a bump oftentimes,
is a threshold going through a doorway.
- And it doesn't take much.
- And yeah, if you've got a little threshold,
and it's like, it's the same thing.
- Yeah, right.
- It just doesn't go.
- You can either go through it backwards,
and you know, watch the difference.
- And kind of lift up.
Yep, goes right over it.
- There are occasions,
where you can't get around to go backwards.
So usually, there's these little bars back here,
here and here.
And I don't know if they're made for this,
but if you put your foot on there and push it down
- It gives you a bit of a lever.
- Yeah. So I'm gonna go up until the wheels touch.
I'm gonna put my foot there,
and gently do a little bit of a wheelie.
You know, you're not gonna pull 'em all the way back,
and scare the, you know, scare grandma half to death.
- Aah!
- But we are gonna just enough to wait, get the wheels off.
And the back ones will go over real easy then.
- And a little bump like this, shouldn't go forward.
- Sure. Yep, exactly.
And you know, you use some judgment,
you have to do it a couple times,
to know exactly what we're talking about.
- All right, Brad,
the other thing that a lot of people have trouble with,
is putting leg rests on and taking 'em off.
- Oh.
- So, and they're pretty universal in that way.
That if-
I don't know Lani, can you get this?
Or how close are we here?
Right, in this area here, if you could look.
So with most of 'em Brad,
have you found this to be the case?
They usually have the little release button right here.
- [Brad] Yep.
Yeah, and they're kind of tucked in there sometimes.
- [Bob] Right.
- [Brad] This one sticks out a little bit.
- [Bob] Sometimes, people have trouble finding them.
But it's usually right in here.
If you push this,
just see how easily the leg rest swings out.
Now there's some that just pull off.
That's really, really old ones that do it.
- [Brad] Yeah, they kind of go vertical,
and it's a lock system.
- [Bob] But these, they usually go out like this,
and to take 'em off,
you have to move it all the way out to the side.
- [Brad] Right.
- [Bob] Like this and then they come off.
- [Brad] You gotta lift straight up,
and you gotta do it gently.
These are the things, if you force 'em it doesn't work.
- [Bob] Yeah.
- [Brad] You have to take your time with it.
- [Bob] If you try to put this back on, like this,
it's just not gonna work.
You have to go out, approach it from the side.
And you have to hook up,
the little nobbies here.
- [Brad] Yep.
(Bob and Brad laughing)
Line up the, the two linemen holes and-
- [Bob] Yep. And then you can push it,
and it'll look how easily it just goes right back in place.
- [Brad] These two points, here are the pivot points.
Yeah, so take your time with it.
Look at it, if you get upset with it,
you're trying to do it-
For one thing, they are finger pinchers.
You get your fingers pinched in there,
and it might make you say bad things.
So we don't want that.
- [Bob] That's right.
And this is a family show.
- Right. Exactly.
- So let's go, let's move these outta the way.
Cause when you're gonna take,
and put this into a vehicle, the first thing you wanna do,
if you're gonna put this into a car,
or a truck or whatever, you wanna take the leg rests off.
- Right. Makes it much easier.
- Yes. It's much less to handle.
- Especially, if you start to take,
move it around and one of those is not hooked,
and they start swinging around and,
that's a real problem.
- So the next part in order to fold it up,
most chairs are very simple.
Brad you just grab the middle like this,
or like this and you just pull up like this.
- Yep. They come right together
- And, and the reverse is also true.
To open it back up again,
All you do is usually push on the side here, the side frame.
And she goes right down.
- Yep.
- I'm glad it went right down,
because otherwise I would've embarrassed.
(Brad laughing)
So we go up like this.
Now usually to put it in a vehicle,
there's two ways you can do,
like if you put it in the back seat,
sometimes you can do this.
Brad, you can actually keep it unlocked.
- Yeah.
- And you can roll right up to the back seat of the car.
You put this side into the car,
- Yeah, the wheels,
you're gonna hook up over to the top,
where you put your feet.
- And then you lift up,
and it goes right inside.
- Yeah, we actually did a video on that.
And it really is a lot easier than lifting it
and hurting your back.
- Right.
And if you have to lift it,
which a lot of times people do,
to put it in the trunk,
You're gonna wanna make sure you lock the brakes.
- Yeah, exactly.
- Because if you don't, this is what happens.
The wheel just spins on you.
So you're gonna go ahead, lock the brakes on both sides.
And now you can get a little bit of a lever arm here,
like this and you can lift it up like this and into the car.
- Yep. Exactly.
Find the, find a strong young person to do that.
If, if they're available, you know.
if you're happen to have a bad back or you're, you know
not the real strong, vibrant person that you once were.
- Another thing, I was gonna point out if,
if your loved one is in a chair a lot,
what happens after a while is this,
the seat gets to get stretched out,
and it creates like a hammock.
- Right. So the sling here becomes slung.
- Yeah. And what happens with that is,
when a person's sitting on that,
and it's slung down, they're gonna sit crooked.
And they're gonna put more pressure
on one side than the other,
or it's gonna put pressure on the side bones here,
and it's it's gonna cause possibly pressure sores.
So a lot of times, that's why you might see sometimes,
where you put an actual board in here,
and then a cushion on top of the board,
Or sometimes they have like really
dense foam that helps keep it from sinking in.
- And sometimes you can get 'em that are shaped,
they call it like an anti-sling.
It's a special cushion.
We don't have one here, but it eliminates that sling.
And it, it keeps it more flat.
This is actually a pretty tight sling, on this here.
- Yeah. This actually is,
this one's holding up really well right now.
I, I wouldn't make any changes to that.
- This is not a cheap wheelchair.
If you just get the standard one,
you'll see the sling will-
- And just over time, if you get an older chair,
that's been around for a long time.
I was gonna point out just one thing
about cushions, Brad.
You know, people, I think,
like this is a real thick cushion.
They think, oh, this'll be good for the people.
- Sure.
- What they don't realize is it's all about, you know,
usually what we like to have,
is like a dense half of the cushion,
and then a softer foam on top.
- So it's a dual density.
- Yeah, so you don't bottom out.
Because what happens,
especially if you have kind of a bony butt,
you have these little sit bones, this is the spine,
and this is the part that you sit on.
Those bones can sink right down,
into the cushion all the way to the bottom.
So you're actually getting pressure on,
just like you're sitting on a board.
So you, you need a cushion,
like I said, normally half and half.
Half, the bottom half is kind of a dense foam.
The top half is a less dense foam.
- Right.
- [Bob] You can feel it on yourself,
if you're bottoming out on a cushion.
- Yeah. But that's a good way to test to see it, you know
to make sure you're.
- Yeah. I, what I do is,
I sit down on a cushion like this,
and I actually, I can feel my butt bone here.
I feel it.
If it sinks all the way to the bottom at all right.
- You gotta give it a few minutes
- Yeah,
cause, I'm actually sinking down as we speak here,
and I'm, I'm all the way bottomed out now.
I can feel it.
- Yep. So it's, little deep can be deceiving.
- Let's talk about the width of the chair.
Boy. This thing really flattens out, doesn't it?
- Oh yeah.
- Bob, you got a big butt.
- I got a big butt. I cannot lie.
Okay. So let's talk about the width of the chair, Brad.
It's kind of tough because you think,
okay I'm gonna make it-
sure, it's wide enough so the person has plenty of room.
Well, if it's too wide,
then it's hard to propel the chair by yourself.
- Exactly.
- So look at, you know,
if I'm way out here, it's gonna be hard to push the chair.
- And it's much harder to get around corners
or through doorways.
- Yeah and a lot of the older homes.
- Oh yeah.
- You, you may not even be able
to get through parts of the home.
We see this all the time.
- When you're trying to squeeze through a tight doorway
and your hands are here,
it's a good way to skin your knuckles
and you know, to get 'em, to cut and bleed
- Yeah, exactly.
So generally you wanna have it as narrow as you can.
You wanna be able to hopefully,
slip a hand in there at least.
But it does, you don't need much more than that, though.
It's, it's fine if, you know,
it's a little bit snug, on that regard.
I'm gonna point out something,
as far as propelling your chair,
and that's, you know, when people are pushing their chair,
make sure they're on the rim here and not on the wheel.
Because if they go down right here,
they're gonna hit the brake,
and they're gonna cut their thumb.
- Yep. It, and it's a nasty one.
- And I have done that many times.
And you wonder why?
Cause I used to play wheelchair basketball.
And when you're in the throws of the game,
you grab onto the tire quite often
and you and you go right down.
So that was considered a badge
of honor when we had our cuts.
- Oh really?
- Yeah.
- It took more than one time to figure that out.
- Oh yeah.
(brad laughing)
- Well you know the thing is,
when you're going real fast-
- Right, you're thinking about the game-
- Yeah right, so-
- Your hand, and your thumb is something that can-
you gotta win the game.
- All right, height of the foot rests,
just real simple to,
a real point to be made.
Is that,
you wanna make sure now,
let's look at this, look how high my knee is here.
- Right.
His knee is higher-
- Way higher than my hip.
- If we put a line,
or drawing of his hip and his knee,
it's point, its level, and it should be,
level with the floors.
- Yeah. It's gonna round out my back.
It's gonna put more pressure on my butt.
So I, again, more likely to have skin breakdown.
So you wanna make sure that it's down.
Usually the, the knee,
this chair is almost too short for me at all.
I mean, I can actually,
that's about right where it should be,
right there, right on the floor.
- Exactly.
- And if you are a person that,
if they go around like this, that's about where you want it.
- Yep, exactly.
- If they don't use the legs rests.
- As if the chair's too tall and their legs are dangling.
- Right. Cause you get pressure underneath the thigh.
- And it cuts circulation off to the feet.
And a lot of times they already have compromise circulation.
You don't want to compound it.
- Yeah. And, and you know, people that sit a lot,
you have to realize,
they should try to take pressure off their bottom,
every 20 minutes or half hour or so.
And a lot of times,
that might be just a quick stand if they can do,
or if they can lean forward even a little bit,
or even side to side doing,
something to take some of the pressure off their bottom.
- Exactly.
There is a lot, the wheelchairs bottom.
- Yeah. There is, there is.
Let's mention just the last one, Brad.
With brakes, there are extenders you can get.
You just take the the rubber off here
and you put it on there and it makes so much easier
to put the brakes on.
- Right.
And they're not very expensive and you know,
I don't know why they just don't make 'em
when you buy it standard.
- Make it standard, yeah.
- These little black things, this one won't come off.
But it will, you just have to work with it.
You may have to have someone with some tools,
or a good strong grip.
But that will come off and they slide right on.
Sometimes you have to fight with them a little bit too,
but they're on-
- Strong like bull?
- Yeah. Strong like the bull.
- All right.
- Wow.
- Thanks everybody for watching.
- All right.
Take care of your wheelchair and your loved ones.