Wheelchair services will at best stick you in a heavy one (in some areas they won’t even give them to people who can walk short distances).
can you get to Birmingham? A bit later in the year there’s an amazing event called naidex where there’s all sorts of wheelchairs, it’s great for trying them and getting an idea of what you might want. It’s quite over whelming. You don’t go to buy but the reps will come to your house.
where in the country are you?
you have your basic chairs, the nhs like the action 3’s. They are heavy and hard to self propel but cheap. The wheels are set so it’s just so hard/near impossible for you to do anything like get up a little curb
theres chairs like the argon’s which are the inbetween ones, lighter, bit more expensive and much easier to push yourself, get up a small curb.
then there’s the active chairs. There’s ones with fused frames which you won’t want as you don’t know your settings and ones that can be adjusted. These cost lots of money but are so light and easy to push yourself. I thought these all had low backs as you normally see people with spinal injuries with low backs in them but you can have all sorts of different custom backs put on them. Everything is custom fit to you and adapted. Sadly the price reflects this!
going to a really good show room or naidex is really helpful, as well as YouTube. I started on YouTube, wheels no heels and another man have good views on custom active chairs if you go down that route. There’s all these words you hear like camber and bucket. Don’t worry if you go to Naidex or a showroom and have no clue, we all had our first wheelchair and didn’t know what we wanted or needed.
I really regret putting up with nhs basic chairs for as long as I did. Do get yourself referred to the nhs though as they can give you some money to put towards a better chair and the waiting list for an assessment is long