Look closely at the picture... you may remember Luke, the blond guy on the ground, from a LCDHA meeting last fall. Remember? He gave a short talk to the room full of hygienists about the aforementioned study and requested more participants. I think he received a TON of willing guinea pigs! The study did get completed, and it is undergoing a peer-review process as we speak. Publication may be a while off, perhaps even a year, but nevertheless the department is very excited for its publication and future applications!
HIIP may get a special summary talk about the study and the results at a meeting very soon! Professor Karduna and I are looking at September or October.
Read more about the day's adventure by clicking the link below:
Anyway, back to the chair. It will be put to good use in Oakridge once it gets a thorough tune-up. My vision is to find a second location for treating families with children. I need to find a space that is more kid-friendly than the office I'm in now. The natural, boisterous noise of kids can be a little too much in the current massage/acupucture building. I don't think leaving will be necessary, but adding a second location in one of the schools (which are few blocks down the street) would be ideal.
Here's the chair on the offload deck I made. The chair is from the 70's I'm guessing, but the forest green color actually is pretty nice.
The following story is a lesson in risk assessment....... (a life lesson). You're all risk/benefit analyzers by profession, so you'll be able to relate.
The problem: I had all several people to load it INTO the truck... but just *me* to offload it. Granted I had gravity's abundant help, but even good things can be excessive LOL. Hmmm.... perhaps I should have arranged for some help..... just kidding... I actually had thought of that, but figured I'd see the chair first and then make some calls. You have to understand the truck I had planned to use... a small chevy ~ very low to the ground, didn't materialize that day. A last minute scramble led to the use of this absolutely HUGE Dodge Dually. I leapt at the chance to use it, but hadn't fully considered how much more difficult it would be to load and offload.
I interrupt this story to offer a sincere and exuberant Thank You to Professor Karduna and his students for assistance in loading the chair.... and equally and perhaps even more so, a huge Thank You for your continued work in helping hygienists work with fewer, and ultimately zero, occupational disability. We need you! Thank you, thank you!!!
And thank you LCC for the donation of the hygiene chair to the Oakridge Clinic. I would also like to give Sharon Hagan, director of LCC's Dental Hygiene Program, a round of applause for her continual support and encouragement of hygienists in independent practice. Your support means SO MUCH.
To continue with the story....
The truck is much higher than it looks; but you get a sense of it's height in the picture on the previous page. The chair is hundreds of pounds, countless hundreds.... it's from the 70's so its a monster. Offloading this baby was going to be interesting.
As I drove home, I might have panicked about the lack of an offload plan, but as a general optimist I tend to have faith that a plan will present itself. It usually does, but unfortunately, sometimes no plan means you get the job of executing the spontaneous plan solo....
Case in point. Home is roughly an hour from the Uof O. During the drive the idea of an offload deck popped into my head. With or without people to help, an offload deck to catch the chair as it came off the tailgate would be necessary. I couldn't imagine what materials I might have to construct one, but I was willing to bet I'd be able to come up with something.
I got home. Classic. I found my entire neighborhood empty of helpers. :( My friends were at work. Brains would have to exceed brawn, that is for sure. The chair is heavier than 10 of me could lift. At first glance, it would appear it couldn't be done. But I was willing to take a second glance, look at the facts, and consider my risk & benefit.
Safety (mine) in the unload process was of top concern, and the chair's safety was critical too (thought admittedly to a lessor degree). With these two things in mind, I scavenged in my garage for materials to assemble the deck. Gee whiz, that coffee table frame, trundle bed frame and scraps of wood from the overhead loft sure came in handy!
Even with the offload deck, the chair had to be lowered a considerable distance... one might even say a risky distance. The chair has a mounted post & unit so its extremely heavy on its left side (I didn't have the right tools to remove -- they used non-metric allan bolts).
Given the extreme heft and uneven weight distribution, a good plan was absolutely essential, backed up with experience. If it couldn't be done, than I was willing to wait until that evening when helpers would be available. But if it could be done I wanted to do it so I could return the truck and be home at a decent hour.
I came up with a plan to become a human lever, pushing the chair slowly off the edge of the tailgate while suspending the chair as long as possible past the fulcrum (the tailgate). If I could attain a good levitated position for the short drop, it would drop straight down the short distance to the deck. If I didn't, it might drop too steeply and then go careening over sideways (due to the left side heaviness). Or if it didn't go off the tailgate perfectly straight, it'd fall to the side for sure. For my own safety, I also created a back up plan called "abort the mission and duck for cover". I'm partly kidding, because truly I was only willing to put my body in a bubble of space that the chair had ABSOLUTELY NO possible way to enter ~ I would stay in the truck bed behind the chair). After doing one last rubber neck to see if any neighbors had materialized, and one last set-up inspection while drinking a glass of iced tea that'd been sweating in the sun, I climbed into the bed of the truck.
Execution: I scrunched down into the crouched position, just heels and bottom touching the bed. I took hold of the strongest leverage point I'd found and started to shuffle the chair forward, moving it left to right. I assessed the situation every second. I reminded myself I could change my mind at any time before the fulcrum-threshold of no-return. Every wiggle of the chair was deliberate and scrutinized. As I got closer to the drop point, the wiggles were smaller and smaller.... a final straightening, and Boom. It was down safe and sound. WOO HOO! What a thrill! A small victory, but a victory just the same. The thrill of mind-over-matter was gratifying... and down to a primal level.
I wouldn't have done it this way if I hadn't believed that I had a 90% shot of it going my way for the chair, and a 99.9% chance of safety for myself (nothing is 100%).
Part of the planning stage resulted in building the deck in such a way that it can be tipped for the chair'ssliiiide into my garage. (The garage is where the chair will undergo the deepest cleaning of its life! Then it will get an overhaul with the repair guy.)
Risk tolerance is a very personal thing. I believe there are life lessons in everything. Absolutely everything. This task was no different. Leaping before looking is NEVER a good idea. Consider your options, make a plan, draw from experience, have an exit strategy, calculate the risk and make sure you can afford it, and go for it. You will 9 times out of 10 end up achieving exactly what you want.
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