I recently read an online article in which someone with MS said that they dreaded “ending up in a wheelchair.” It made me feel rather sad and I left a comment to the effect that using a wheelchair can actually be really liberating.

It’s not that I don’t empathise with that feeling: even though I had been using a scooter for a few years, I was really upset at the thought of having to get a wheelchair. I should have remembered how wonderful it felt the first time I went round our local park when I got my Luggie scooter – after being a regular visitor to the park, as my mobility got worse we had stopped visiting it, so going there again after some years was really exciting.

Realising that I was going to have to start using a wheelchair felt like yet another stage in the process of having no mobility at all. At that point, I was using my scooter to get to my office from the car, to get around at work and to visit places such as the park or the out-of-town shops. You can’t conveniently use Luggie scooters to sit at a desk or table and they are not comfortable to sit on for any great length of time, so I would transfer onto my office chair or the ‘teacher’s’ chair in the classrooms at work, but this was becoming increasingly tiring and quite tricky as the chairs were used by other people and might have been left at a raised height – it’s really difficult to lower an office chair if you aren’t sitting on it! I would sometimes ask a student to lower it for me but even so, I’d be nervous that it would shoot out from behind me and deposit me on the floor! Luggie do actually do a Powerchair now, but as it is even heavier than the scooter, I’m not sure how practical it would be.

We organised a home demonstration of an Eden Mobility ‘Comet’ Powerchair and once it became clear that I would be able to use it to sit at a desk, I realised that this was the way to go: no more worrying about transferring onto an office chair or struggling to get round the house leaning on the furniture and Pete’s arm. Fortunately, it’s narrow enough that you can get through ordinary doorways that haven’t been widened so we didn’t have to adapt the whole house, although we did get a slope put in up to the front door by Passmore who also did some of our bathroom alterations but many of our doors do have scrape marks on them now!

The front door threshold would have been problematic, but Pete cunningly built up layers of vinyl floor underneath the carpet to create a gentle slope so I can move in and out of the house with barely a jolt.

We may have to make more adaptations in the future but for now, I love that I can get round the whole house and now, thanks to Pete putting in a slope instead of some steps in the garden, the whole of the garden, even on the lawn when it’s dry.

I would prefer to be able to walk but given that I can’t, a Powerchair is a whole lot better than struggling around or not being able to go places.