Walkers

Walkers, 4-wheel walkers, rollators.  They seem to have lots of names and there are many varieties.  I used to think they were all pretty much alike.  I remember years ago asking my friend Marie why she needed two.  The lightweight one she used inside and for short walks.  The other was a combined walker/wheelchair – a bit heavier, but useful for longer walks with a companion who might push her on it if she got too tired.

Now Antigone uses walkers.  Her first use was not as a walker but as a wheelchair.  We had Marie’s old walker at our house.  With Antigone’s marching pan-pipe group (Los Zamponistas), I took on pushing her so I could keep her in pace with the rest of the group and look after choreography while she focused on playing her panpipes.  We used Marie’s old walker and I screwed a piece of timber across it to place her feet on.  So Antigone was facing forwards, I pushed it backward compared to its original use and design.  We used this at Yackandandah Folk Festival 2023.

Pushing her like this with the swivelling wheels at the back is like trying to push a shopping trolley backwards – hard work.  Around the steep streets of Yackandandah, steering it and keeping it under control was quite an upper body workout for me.

Before the next festival where the Zamps were performing (CresFest 2023), we purchased Antigone’s first walker, a cheap walker/wheelchair.  This was a big improvement.

In Broome, Antigone used our cheap walker-wheelchair as a walker around the caravan park and we used it in both its modes at parkrun.  It struggled with uneven pavements, speed humps, and even large tree-seeds on paths.  We thought it was too heavy, but were wrong.  The next one (a Peak Ellipse Heavy Duty walker) was heavier, but much better with rough terrain due to its larger wheels, both wider and larger diameter.  These wheels rolled easily over speed humps and other obstructions which were previously problematic.  The first day we had it we took it to Cable Beach, as pictured on the ‘Catching the Moon’ post.  Even with hard sand, beach use would not have been possible with the other one.  Nor would steep grassy slopes as pictured below.

The walker seat also doubled as a convenient way to take Peppa for walks.

Wilma the Walker was good for walking, but Antigone was unable to use the brakes and parking brakes as designed.  The parking brakes required three separate motions to apply them – too complex.  The difficulty with the parking brakes was clear right from the start.  I thought conventional walker parking brakes would be better for her, but since we’ve been home and using Marie’s old lightweight walker I see that Antigone does not conventional push-down walker parking brakes either.

Our physios said they had heard of walkers where the default is having brakes on, similar to airport trolleys.  These walkers have ‘brake-release’ levers rather than brake levers.  The levers need to be held while walking to allow the wheels to turn.  I researched these and I came across the U-step II and the Topro Neuro.  they call these ‘reverse-braking’ walkers, but I prefer the term ‘safety-braking’ walkers.  We tried them last week and bought a U-step II.  It has some nifty features: springing front wheel that deals very well with cracks in footpaths or indoor rugs – up to 2cm or so; brake release is via grasping one or both levers; low centre of mass, so very stable.

Wilma the rough terrain Walker is still needed for rougher terrain such as camping, but I thought it would be confusing for Antigone to change between walkers with brakes using opposite logic.  So I took her disc brakes apart.  I was able to change Wilma’s brakes so now they are on all the time, unless (both) levers are depressed.  It was a very satisfying DIY job.  I did it by swapping three parts between the left brake and the right brake – a spring and the parts with ball-bearings that control the gradual increase of braking.  I also needed to adjust where the springs sprung from internally.  It looks the same but works opposite!

Winnie the Walker/Wheelchair is the walker we take when going to a shopping mall or Ikea. When it is likely that the walking will be too much for Antigone, the wheelchair feature is needed. Winnie has more conventional walker brakes which rub against the wheels.  It will present a different challenge to convert to ‘safety braking’.

Why do you need ‘wheelchair mode’ when most walkers have four wheels and a seat?

Excellent question. People who use walkers often tire before their companions and may wish to be pushed. And most walkers have wheels, a seat and handles to push with. Pushing a walker with somebody sitting on it is a strongly intuitive thing to do.

Unfortunately, pushing a walker with somebody sitting on it frequently leads to head injuries, and worse.

When a wheeled walker encounters a channel, gutter or small step between footpath slabs, often the front wheels stop and the top tilts forward, like tripping. A person sitting on the walker makes this ‘tripping’ more likely due to both extra weight on the wheels and the centre of weight shifted forwards. When a walker ‘trips’ forwards, a rear-facing sitter can topple backwards. Falling backwards, they cannot use their arms to break their fall and their head is likely to hit the ground.

Do not be tempted to push somebody rear-facing in a walker, even if they are tired and they request it. Especially Antigone, and she will ask to be pushed.

This ‘tripping’ scenario is commonplace and injuries severe. It seems likely to me that future design standards will require automatic weight-activated braking to prevent walkers from being used to push people. Automatic weight-activated braking is another kind of ‘safety braking’ that I have seen on the internet, but that we have not explored.