Wheelchairs Are F***ing Heavy!

By the end of the year, I’m pretty sure I’ll have some nice guns, or Popeye arms. Have I finally gotten back into my hourly arm exercises at work? I wish. My workout comes from lifting a wheelchair.

I know that there are lighter wheelchairs out there. My aunt used to have a light travel one. Yet none of my father’s wheelchairs are fortunate enough to be light. His current one doesn’t even have leg lifts that stay on. On the one occasion leg lifts were on the chair, 1 fell off and damn near crushed my toes.

For those who don’t know, for the past 3 years, my dad has been in a nursing home almost as much as he’s been here at home with me. Recently, I've been taking my dad out to his doctors' appointments then a meal afterward. Do you realize what this means? On 6 separate occasions, I have to heft a wheelchair in and out my trunk.

This is exercise in and of itself, especially since there is an art to it. First, the trunk has tone relatively free of debris. Since my trunk operates as a catch all (currently it has a few textbooks, some sodas for my dad, a wayward wheelchair cushion and my dad's gloves from March), this requires pre-prep (shoving things out of the way or tossing them in the back seat).

Then there's the folding of the chair and figuring out how not mash any fingers in the process. After that, there is the 3-foot lift and maneuver, where I have place the large wheels in first, then do some crazy twisting to be able to close the trunk. This lifting and maneuvering means that proper attire has to be worn dresses and skirts are not recommended.

The exercise goes in reverse for the removal, with the added twist of seeing how much weight to bear down to flatten the chair. Dad usually needs a little assistance out of the car too, so I squally offer him arm like we’re about to start a waltz.

I get about 3 of these reps for each set. Add to this the aerobic workout I get from pushing Dad around. Thanks to our excursion at the VA, I managed to log almost 4,000 steps! To me, those steps should count as double with the resistance. Never let anyone tell that as people older, they get lighter, even if they lost weight.

I guarantee you tomorrow I’ll wake up feeling like I wrestled a walrus and wondering why I feel that way. But if it gives me a bit of a workout, it's okay since my ultimate goal is to stay off meds and out of a wheelchair.