hello everyone welcome back to our channel so today I just want to quickly
show you how you can change your wheelchair wheels while still in the wheelchair
and there's a few reasons you might want to do this for example if
you're going outside and off-road you might want to change your everyday
wheels out for some off-road wheels or maybe you need some beach tyres if
you're going somewhere a bit more difficult also if you're coming from the
outside back into the house and your wheels are covered in mud or grit or
something like that you might want to change them out for a
clean pair of wheels so that you're not dragging all that dirt through the house so
let's get to it
so in order to do this technique you have to be comfortable
tipping yourself on to your side a little bit because if your wheel is
touching the floor you won't be able to take it off and put a new one on so in
order for me to tip my wheelchair on the side I find I need something stable and
sturdy to pull off so for this example I'm gonna use the standing frame here
but later in the video I'll show you a few other things that you might be able
to use in your house so the first thing you need to do is line yourself up next
to the thing you're going to pull off but you need to make sure you leave a
large gap between yourself and the thing you're going to pull off so that you
have enough space for your wheelchair to tip over so this might take a little bit
of trial and error to find the right distance the next thing you want to do
is put the brake on closest to the thing you're pulling off so you need to make
sure you have the wheel that you're going to change into close enough that
you'll be able to reach it once you're in the tipped position so I find about
this sort of place is good but also not so close that it's in the way as you tip
over so in order to tip your chair I put one hand on the thing I'm going to pull
off one hand on the push rim on the opposite side of my
wheelchair making sure this brake is still off you then sort of have to rock your
body and then really hard pull up on this side and forward on this side so if
you do it all together it looks something like this so once I'm tipped
up I need to make sure I'm far enough over that either my shoulder or my chair
is leaning on either the wall or whatever I'm pushing off this means I
can tilt my body enough over so that I can see what is going on on this wheel I
can see the axle hole because it's happened before where I tipped myself over
taken my wheel off and then I can't see the axle hole to get the new wheel in and
that leaves you in a bit of a precarious position because you've only
got one wheel on your chair so before you start make sure you feel stable in
this position because once your wheel is off there's no going back if you come
out of your tilted position then there's a chance you could fall over so in this
position I'm perfectly stable no chance of falling so I'm going to push in on my
axle pin and slide the wheel out I then need to get this wheel out of the way to
make room for my other one so I'm just gonna lay it there this one is close enough
for me to reach so I'm gonna bring it round line it up to the side of the
wheelchair and then I then reach far enough to grab some spokes and the axle pin
it's the easiest way to lift up a wheel with one hand I'm gonna line up the axle
pin with the axle hole push in on the button and slide it in and once all this
is done you're safe to come back down so slowly lower yourself down and
you're done so another thing you could pull off is a door frame so line myself
up here I can reach around grab the opposite side of the door frame and that
gives me something strong to pull off like so
and done. so another thing you could use to pull off is the sofa with the sofa just be
careful that it doesn't move as you're doing it as this could destabilize you
and make you fall over if you're not careful so for this one I'm going to
reach around the armrest and get a good hold and then tip myself over because
this one's a bit lower I'm actually leaning the chair on the sofa rather than
my shoulder this time and then pushing off the sofa so that I can see what I'm
doing
and done so if you find you've got absolutely nothing you can pull off and
you're a bit more confident with your ability to control your balance
side-to-side then you could essentially get yourself up onto a side lean by just
rocking your chair back and forth now this is a little bit more difficult
particularly if you haven't got any core and it involves locking both of your
wheels this time one hand on each push rim and then throwing your weight side
to side until you tip safely over onto in this case I've got this the sofa but
you could do against the wall or anything like that so something like this
and now I'm safely leaning against the sofa I can now take this brake off
and back down so we have one final method for changing your wheel while in the wheelchair
and this one is good for those of you either not confident tipping
yourself on to the side you don't have the strength to tip yourself onto the
side or you just can't find anything to pull off and that involves the help of an
assistant so Claire can you come and help me out so all you have to do as the
wheelchair user is lean as much of your weight forward and to the side as
possible because this takes a lot of weight off the back wheel and makes it
really easy to change okay so I've got the spare wheel ready to go and
then I just pull up very slightly on the back of the wheelchair off with the wheel
and then on with the next one
and that is it, very easy not very difficult at all but there is hardly any weight on the
back of the wheelchair great and that's definitely a lot easier for
me but it's better to be independent when you have the chance so that's how
you can change your wheelchair wheels while still in your wheelchair if you
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I'll do my best to get back to you thank you for watching see you next time bye