Pascal has a passion. He was a chef before his spinal cord injury, and he was determined to be a chef after his spinal cord injury. It was never a question of if he would return to work, only how. Pascal had to try various approaches and pieces of technology along the way, and ultimately got involved in designing a standing chair to meet all his needs in the kitchen. Pascal has now opened his own 55-seat, fully accessible restaurant.
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Like many people who return to work, Pascal’s first thought was to change the physical environment to suit his new needs. He considered the usual kitchen adaptations, such as lower counters and special sinks. But there is a lot more to think about in redesigning the kitchen of a restaurant compared with that in a private home. In addition to sinks and counters, Pascal would need a special stove, special broilers, or as he put it, “special everything.” And he is not the only one working in this kitchen. Teamwork in a restaurant kitchen is essential. Pascal reasoned, if he had redesigned the whole kitchen so that he could work from his chair, “my staff would have a different kitchen, and I wouldn’t be able to work side by side with them…. I thought it would better if I were at the same height as my staff, not only in terms of working, but also in terms of being able to direct people…. I’m going to have to direct a team of 12 people in my restaurant, so for me it was quite important to be standing and be able to have an eye-to-eye conversation with my staff.”
Pascal also considered his relationship with his customers. He explains, “I like to see my customers in the dining room, and I thought, you know, standing and facing them the way I used to would be important for me and for my customers.” It was becoming clear to Pascal that he needed to be standing to make his dream a reality.
While Pascal was still working for a different restaurant, he and his boss considered installing what they called a track system. Pascal remembered he had seen patients at his rehab centre who were not able to stand and who had used a harness system to walk on a treadmill. He thought, “This is exactly what I need: some kind of track system where I’m suspended with leg braces, and I could do the job that I want to do.” The track system would be installed across the ceiling, and Pascal would be able to move across in the kitchen in the harness.
Pascal generated a lot of interest in the idea of a track system, because of its obvious possibilities for other adaptations. He explains, “I had an interview in [a major daily newspaper] about a year and a half ago, and I talked about my [track system] project. And I had people all over Canada calling me…. Lots of people were interested in it. And [staff at a non-profit disability agency] actually read the article, and they also called me, and they wanted to help me with the funding and finding the engineer.”
The theory, however, was better than the practice—at least for Pascal’s situation. One problem was that the track system wouldn’t allow him enough mobility in the kitchen. As Pascal puts it, “I was just capable of staying within the limitation of my track system.” This meant he couldn’t go into the walk-in fridge, or between the tables in the dining room, or behind the bar, to name a few places.
Another consideration was safety. If the power went down, as it might in a fire, Pascal would be stuck in the harness system until someone brought him a wheelchair. For these reasons, and especially because of the risk of fire in a restaurant kitchen, the track system project fizzled. But Pascal had attracted an engineer who was interested in working with him. He says, “The engineer convinced me that it was better to move to a wheelchair.”
For a year, Pascal tried to work from a standard stand-up chair. It didn’t work. He explains, “The manoeuvrability in my kitchen was absolutely awful. It was messy. It was dirty. It was obstructing the work of my colleagues. It was too big for the kitchen.” It was also extremely difficult to maintain proper hygiene standards, because Pascal would have to “go back on a sitting position, wheel to my sink, wash my hands, go back again on a wheeling position, go back to my station—it wasn’t working.”
Pascal also discovered that there is not enough upper-body support in a regular standing chair for the type of work he does. A regular standing chair has a belt with a small cushion across the chest that holds the person in the chair. Pascal recalls, “It absolutely doesn’t help because I was working so hard, and I was pushing against the belt. At the end of the day … I used to have bruises on my sternum.” These problems sent Pascal back to the drawing board—literally.
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See Pascal demonstrate his stand up chair.
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Because Pascal is so passionate about his profession, and because he put so much thought into his needs in the kitchen, he made careful, informed decisions about the technology that would get him back to the work that he loves. He was willing to try a number of approaches until he found the best one, and he was willing and able to meet the technology half way. His chair would have to be custom-built, but he would also have to build up his strength and stamina to make the best use of the chair.
Pascal began his long and arduous path to designing the perfect chef’s wheelchair. First he needed a prescription from a doctor, because without one, he could never get funding for designing the chair. So the first step was to convince his rehab doctor that he could stand for ten hours a day. Pascal used his regular stand-up chair to build his endurance. He says, “Day by day, I stood up for an hour, two hours, until I was capable of staying up for six hours. Very tiring, because the upper-body support wasn’t there. But I was doing it.” He also walked using a harness suspended over a treadmill three to four times per week to build his strength. He recalls, “It took a whole year to convince the doctor. So then I said to the doctor, ‘So can we go forward now with my new wheelchair? Can we start building it?’ And she said, ‘Yes.’”
A project like this requires teamwork. “Five people were involved with me on different parts of the chair.” In addition to the doctor, a physiotherapist worked with him to find the best position for his hips and legs. Another physiotherapist worked on making sure he would have enough upper-body support. And there were two engineers working on the mechanical design of the chair. Pascal pulled all the pieces together: the health professionals, the for-profit vendor, the not-for-profit agencies and the insurance company that funded the project. And he was intimately involved at every stage.
Pascal describes the many features of the chair that took over a year to develop. “There are two front wheels and two small caster wheels. The chair turns on itself, which is very good. It’s not using extra space to move, to turn around. It’s basically turning on itself.” The base of the chair weighs a lot, which helps give the chair good balance without a really wide base. Pascal explains, that in a regular standing chair, “The way they make it safe for you is … it’s very wide at the bottom.” But this affects the manoeuvrability of the chair. “With the chair that we built, we put a lot of weight at the bottom—the engine is at the bottom, all my weight will be basically all on the platform. So we’re talking about almost 390 pounds at the bottom of the chair. So there’s very little chance that someone, even by accident, is going to push me and make me fall.” Having so much weight at the bottom of the chair also makes for “excellent driving. The manoeuvrability is exceptional when you’re standing.” He admits, “It’s not as good when you’re sitting, but we’re fixing that problem.” And to get up to standing from sitting, “it just takes about 12 seconds I think…. And after that you’re pretty much free to do whatever you want!”
It took Pascal and the team nine months just to find “the perfect position, the sweet spot,” so that he could stand for the ten-hour days his restaurant demands of him. The base of the chair has marks where Pascal must put his feet to make sure that he is using the chair and his own body most efficiently. For pressure relief during these long hours, the armrests are designed to move, “so you can pressure relief your whole body like that, without your legs and your feet moving out of position…. Anytime while I’m standing [I] can help myself for a couple of minutes because you can do one side or the other.” The seat of the chair is a low-profile, air-filled cushion to prevent injury because “you don’t want to be pushed forward if it’s a fixed cushion.”
Pascal still has to worry about the pressure on his feet, but he wears special stockings when he is working to help control swelling. He has had some problems with swelling in his feet, which he relieves with half an hour of lying down. He recognizes that he will have to “be careful. I’m going to make sure, you know, everyday, check everywhere.”
They dealt with the upper-body support issue with “a piece of foam that’s rigid enough … to hold your tummy and your upper body tight, without hurting you. It’s rigid, like I said, but it’s still foam … and everything holds tight, and you feel extremely comfortable. There are three big straps that you can adjust, even when you’re up. I can undo the top strap and actually bend over my body without any problem, reaching even further down on the table, almost on the floor or on the top shelf. You can undo the top strap and even give yourself even more movement, which is really great when you’re standing.” Pascal says it looks as if he is wearing armour, but it is flexible and comfortable. “It goes on top of my chef jacket and I just put an apron on and basically you don’t see … any support. It just disappears…. And we made it in a breathing material so that it would not be too hot to wear.”
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Pascal’s stand-up chair also addresses some other kitchen-specific problems. For example, hygiene is no longer a problem because the chair is operated with a joystick. Pascal explains, “I really like the fact that I just need a joystick to move around, so if my hands are dirty, basically I can move the chair to the sink and wash my hands without touching my wheels.” The have also “installed a couple of gadgets” for cooking. “One of them is a tray that I can put in front of me, so I can wheel into my fridge in a standing position and carry a box with no problem without using my arms. And it’s a removable platform. It’s like a tray basically in front of me…. [I can] get a case of onions or garlic, put it in front of me, wheel into my station. To carry a suckling pig or a salmon, it doesn’t matter. I don’t have to worry about asking anybody for help in terms of my job. That’s so very important for me.”
Pascal has not been shy about sharing his success with others. He took his chair to another city where he was a visiting chef. His friends there remembered him from shortly after he was injured, so they were amazed by his independence and good health.
He also presented his chair to a group at his fitness centre, with the added attraction that he was supposed to cook in the adapted kitchen there. Ironically, Pascal had problems in the adapted kitchen. He recalls, “The problem is I’m so tall already, and I’m two inches taller in that wheelchair, so the equipment was too low for me to cook in the kitchen. It’s kind of funny because [usually they] have to make everything lower [for people with spinal cord injuries.] But for me to be competent and productive in my kitchen, everything has to be a little taller—I’d say three inches taller, which is good because two of my staff are around six foot nine and seven foot tall.”
Pascal also wants to let others at his rehab centre actually try out his stand-up chair. “They can organize a session with some physios, because if the doctors like it and the physios like it, [the government funding program] might see how that chair can help people…. If I can get that chair to be accepted [for government funding], other people can use it at work…. That opens more fields to us, that’s how I see it…. Like a teacher can be teaching, standing again … can write on the blackboard again, standing. A scientist can be working on his microscope, standing again…. It should work for everybody who is thinking, you know, maybe I cannot do that job because I’ve got to stand. But we’re capable of standing, so all we need is the tool.”
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Pascal could also have had publicity about his chair in some of the major news media, but he is saving that for later. He reasons, “I put off all the interviews that I was supposed to do because I’m opening a restaurant and I want to show the people that … it’s not just a gadget for someone who wants to spend money just to dream about standing. This is going to be used in my workplace, and I’m going to be doing the same job that I used to do. So that’s why I put that off; I want to show the people what we can do.”
After he took his chair to another city so that he could be a visiting chef, Pascal had the chair at home for a while. He found many uses for it. He found he didn’t “have to worry about my wife putting things on the shelves that are too high for me…. I had no problem wheeling from my kitchen, using every inch of my apartment, reaching on the top of my wine cellar. Finally, I can put paper on top of my printer…. Plus, we want to do some renovations in my home. I want to do some painting with my wife. I’m going to be able to do the top of the walls.”
Pascal finds that his stand-up chair is “not a wheelchair that’s good for outside.” He is quick to add, however, “We are changing a couple of things to make it very easy to wheel outside. But, you know, outside you’re confronted with curbs and all these things. You can actually do a little curb with that wheelchair, but since you’re standing … you want to make sure that you don’t land on your face. We know that wheelchair is safe, but I just don’t want to take it out. We did not build it for a street purpose.”
So how do you get home with a two hundred and fifty pound wheelchair in the first place? In an adapted van, of course. And with a little help. Pascal wheels into the van with his regular chair. Then his wife drives the stand-up chair into the van. It’s a little cramped, to be sure, but manageable. He has transported the chair like this for special trips, but for the most part, Pascal plans to leave the stand-up wheelchair at the restaurant, plugged in and recharging the battery for the next ten-hour day.
Another piece of technology that Pascal uses for travel is a portable combination toilet seat and bath bench. He already had a trip to Europe planned when he was injured, and he knew Europe is “a bit behind” in accessibility. He saw a small, single bath bench in a technology catalogue and was able to get it easily from a wheelchair vendor. He describes it as a “single bath bench with the hole and it’s padded…. It can go on the top of a toilet, and it can also go in any bathtub or shower.” It is light and his wife is able to take it apart so that it can fit into his luggage. Pascal explains, “I think it’s twelve bolts to undo and that thing goes in my luggage. It takes one big piece of luggage, but you can put your clothes all around…. And it’s not heavy because it’s aluminum, so it was very practical for me and my wife. It takes five minutes for my wife to put it together.” This bath bench/toilet seat has allowed Pascal and his wife to travel to many places in Europe and Canada, “because it served both purposes, from showering to going to the toilet. So it was perfect.”
When asked about the impact of assistive technology on his life, Pascal is clear. He combines the use of his stand-up chair with his other assistive technology to “travel as much as I want, go overseas, do the job that I like, play sports, move around the city, go see my friends regardless of what kind of house they have, because we can use different ways to get into their houses.” But the best discovery he made is the importance of being able to stand. As Pascal succinctly puts it, “I don’t think it should be a considered a privilege for us to stand again.”
Pascal would have rehab providers think differently when it comes to getting people with spinal cord injuries back to their lives. “I think, as much as they can, they should think about us, not just wheeling, but standing. Like I say, it’s not supposed to be considered a privilege. Wheeling is good for us because it means we’re independent, … but we can stand…. We’re capable of standing, so we should be standing.” Pascal points out that “it’s no secret” that there are many health benefits from standing for people with spinal cord injuries, such as stronger bones and better circulation. But for Pascal, there is more to it than that. As he said, he did not put all this time and energy into making a “gadget for someone who wants to spend money just to dream about standing.” Being able to stand has directly influenced his productivity and personal fulfillment in his career. He explains that without his standing chair, “I would have stayed in the restaurant business, but I don’t think I would have started a new restaurant…. It’s so easy to work…. That gives me a lot of confidence, which is very important. When you want to open a business, and you’re going to spend that kind of money, confidence is a major part of your success. That wheelchair gives me a lot of confidence.”
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