Medical Supply Companies, Medicaid, and the Madness: Deja Voux, I Have Seen This Tree Before

About twenty-four hours after my power wheelchair was finally returned to me, my excitement of finally gaining my freedom back came to a screeching halt. At about four o'clock in the afternoon, after traveling only a mile or two, I realized that the colorful gage indicating the charge of my chair was informing me that my power chair was going to die. So, I plugged in my chair, hoped that my chair dying was only a fluke, and used my manual chair for the rest of the night. The next day, I faced a similar situation; I again only traveled a mile or two, just to have my chair die.

When fully charged, my power chair batteries are supposed to allow me to travel twenty-eight miles before needing to be charged. Only being able to travel one to two miles before having to charge my chair is not conducive to my lifestyle. It is also completely unnerving to not be able to trust the vehicle that provides my ability to get from point A to point B. My power chair -- when in a working condition -- is my freedom.

Six months ago, I began to loose my freedom. The gage indicating the charge of my power chair batteries began to inform me at random times that my chair was going to die. The Medical Supply Company (MSC), that I was working with, told me that the issue with my chair was the batteries. Fast forward two months after ordering new batteries, they still had yet to arrive, and my chair died. I went searching for a loaner power chair or loaner batteries that I could use while waiting for my own batteries to come; I went to the Lion's Club (LC), a non-profit medical supply loan closet. In contrast of the MSC, the LC actually preformed a set of diagnostics to check out how much life was left in my power chair batteries; the LC deemed my batteries to be just fine, and that there was something else going on with my chair. 

I returned to the MSC, and left my chair with the expectation that the MSC would preform a complete set of diagnostics and figure out what was going on with my chair. It took the MSC four days to let me know that it was the joystick cable, not the batteries, and then it took another seven weeks for the joystick to arrive. However, it was the incorrect joystick that arrived at the MSC, so four more weeks went by before the correct joystick was installed on my chair.

This brings me to last week. I finally received my chair after two and a half months of driving an unreliable chair, and then another two and a half months of not having a power chair at all. I was ecstatic to finally regain my freedom, but now I am right back to where I was prior to regaining my freedom. My chair was fixed, just to have it die again. 

It is ironic that the MSC first said that the problem with my chair was the batteries, just to have the batteries die as my chair sat unused while waiting to be fixed.