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22.1    Hip Swinging Dance

My self-transfer from manual wheelchair to bed
is like performing a stationary
bouncing and hip swinging dance.

Wheelchair closest to bed.
Right wheel diagonally to mattress.
Feet firmly on the floor.
Right hand gripping onto mattress edge.
Left fist on wheelchair seat cushion.

Leaning my upper body forward,
I lift up my buttocks
from the cushioned wheelchair seat,
just in front of the wheel,
to swing them towards the mattress.

Suddenly,
before my transfer is completed,
he stiffens my right leg,
and throws my left leg up,
nearly ejecting me out of the wheelchair.

My hip swinging dance
has become a front kick dance.

Has he become impatient or aggressive?
Or is he helping me to dance?
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22.2  Monkey Bars of Different Heights 

My toilet to wheelchair self-transfer
is going uphill sideways.

Wheelchair besides toilet bowl.
Right hand on handrail on the wall.
Left hand on wheel and rim.
Feet firmly on the floor
between wheelchair and toilet bowl.

I lift my buttocks off the soft, padded toilet seat,
move them over the wheel,
aiming at the lined wheelchair seat.

Suddenly,
he straightens my lifeless legs,
glides the heels forward on the floor,
leaving my long arms
hanging on monkey bars of different heights.
He nearly glides my body
down onto the floor
in front of the toilet bowl.

Is he trying to make me perform
some tricky hip hop dance?

The Invisible Puppeteer’s unpredictable tricks.
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© 2015 K-KLokePhD

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Wheelchair to Bed Transfer. Picture taken, with permission, from
http://www.spinalistips.se/tips-transfer-from-wheelchair-to-bed-en-601.html

Wheelchair to Bed Transfer. Picture is ‘developed by the University of Washington Center for Technology and Disability Studies and reproduced here with their permission’, taken from
http://www.msktc.org/sci/factsheets/safe-transfer-technique

Wheelchair beside Toilet. Picture by K A Tan of Penang, Malaysia,
copyright free, taken from his Blog at
http://wapenang.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/how-to-design-toilet-wc-for-disabled.html

A Girl on Monkey Bars. Photo by Nesnad.
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International, 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license. via-http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Japanesehighschoolgirlonmonkeybars-dec19-2014.jpg

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