My wife have had MS for 29 years. I have been with her for 20 of those years and we have been able to make the best of it. She have gradually got worse and stopped walking and started wheelchairing 7 years ago. She is now weak in her arms, that she uses an electric wheelchair.
I know, from experience, how restricted a person in a wheel chair is, as well as her spouces and friends. Ii is a mystery how little that is done about availibility, as if the only ones affected by obsticles would be the persons sitting in wheel chairs.
I have searched the internet for wheel chairs that could assist a person in any terrain but only found eather tanklike monsters or semi weak construktions that hardly would do the job.
Since I am working as a consulting engineer, with all kinds of machines and vehicles, I took the challange of making one myself. I would like to post a question: How big is the need for a device, a chair that a person can ride in comfortable in any terrain? May it be hills sloping 50 degrees, stony areas, cliffs, sand dunes leading to the ocean, pathways in forests- asa well as - any stairs, straight circular or bent, sideslanting sidewalks, narrow shop entrances a couple of steps up, and so on. In short - anywhere a walking person could go! Including into that lovely lake or ocean for a dip a hot sommerday.
i have MS for 3 years now. I do not have any kinetic problems but I am aware that I will eventually. The wheel chair that you designed will give hope to many people. Don’t forget that all of us are psycologically ruined because of the fact that we won’t be able to walk and help our selves some time in the future...Any patient will find it pretty handy since they couldn’t reach the top floor of a building, but now they can...they couldn’t move from the ground floor to the next floor on a duplex because there was no elevator. Hope is everything about MS. I have to thank you for your consern on your wife on behalf of everyone....
I am alrady aware of the financial side of MS from experience. There have to be set up a different business model to manufactor and distribute the wheel chair, since people with MS have little money. There are lots of ways to solve that problem and I have a few I would like to try. The hardest part, I believe, would be to get the potential users of this wheel chair realize that they really can change their access. They can get aboard that train or bus as a walking person. I believe any have resigned in a kind of acceptance that they are restricted to ground floor as you say.
Weak and still able to go anywhere! - Multiple sclerosis forum - General
