You have to organise this yourself because nobody else will. 

I like to be able to run my house and live on my own independently or with my girlfriend. I don't want to rely on her or anyone else. I do NOT like being held back or prevented from having a normal easy life by the system or by lack of some essential equipment. With it a GOOD PowerChair I am able. Without it I cannot function EFFECTIVELY. Every little thing I do is a fight. E.G. Dog walking. Grass cutting. Carrying a coffee from the kitchen to the PC... You name it and its much more awkward in a manual chair.

Contrary to popular belief, if you are paraplegic you actually do NEED a good powerchair if you are to have any real "quality" of life. This is based on 12 years living in the real world WITH a Powerchair and a previous few without one and struggling!!!

The difference is absolutely night and day.  If its broken or unusable I am screwed!   I have have to go back to my manual chair.  Its like having your legs cut off.  Any active life just stops.  Everything becomes slower and more difficult or impossible to do. Manual chairs really are THAT restrictive. Most users don't ever "see it" though because they are used to it and just accept its problems as normal.

You can manage without a good powerchair obviously, but its immensely difficult and slow and often requires help from others to do countless things. Why should you just "manage" to get bye? Manual chairs hinder everything you do. Right now I am building a PC. I have been carrying boxes, cases, tool boxes, half built stuff back and forth to the bin outside and to my bench, and from my car up and down ramps and through doorways. All of it held with one hand as I drive with the other. Its too big, too hard to do this stuff in a manual chair. If its even possible.

You also need a suitable and matching vehicle to function really effectively as these two as a matching pair are almost essential if you want a some normal independent and most importantly, an active and busy life in today's society. Not cheap, but being disabled seldom is. 

There really isn't a choice. I just went out and and took the dog along the beach for an hour, about 3 miles away, called in the garden centre and bought a large tree that I wanted for the front of the house. Cant even hope to carry that in a manual chair one handed!  Never mind having a hot cup of coffee as I went along the beach with the dog.

Problem with the system: After a huge accident left me paralysed (T4 complete, chest down) I completely ignored the advice of the (money saving) "system" whose logic "dictates" that a paraplegic does not "need" a powerchair.

Actually he does no matter what they tell you. You can survive in a fashion without one, but that's just not adequate. Get one anyway. Trust me!!!  You don't have to use it. You will still have your sporty manual wheelchair sat there. But if its there you will try it. And you will do so more and more very quickly and eventually wonder why the hell you waited and wasted all those years struggling!!!  Its called brain washing.

They are only for "Quads" apparently!  As explained by physios, OT's and health professionals the world over. Just because you can manage in a manual wheelchair (or a very expensive sports manual wheelchair) does NOT make it a sensible option!  But it makes it much cheaper for the system...

Now there are thousands of Paraplegics (and others)  reading this saying that they don't "need" or "want" a power wheelchair!  And that I am talking crap. I can hear them. I have heard it all before!  Because they too have been brainwashed by the system.

I hear it every time I go back to the spinal injuries unit and in other wheelchair users homes that I visit.  They are simply *brainwashed*.  The seed was planted in the typical spinal injuries rehab unit. Every Paraplegic "knows" that they use manual wheelchairs and Quadriplegics "need" powered wheelchairs...: So a Para using a PowerChair is just "wrong" isn't it?  Actually NO its ridiculous! Blame your rehab for this attitude.  They simply cant accept the obvious logic on this page. In the same way that religious people cant accept obvious scientific truth.

Nobody likes to think they were brainwashed, but in this country at least, it happens. Its not a conscious thing done on purpose perhaps but they (the OTs, physios, professionals, haven't changed with the times. Every Paraplegic goes through a type of production line in hospital as they recover. Takes many months to over a year.

My time was 1996 was in Sheffield in the UK. A spinal injuries unit. The Osborn Unit. All Physios and OT's (Occupational Therapists) are trained - probably quite innocently - to be this way.  They really believe a manual wheelchair is a better bet (or cheaper bet) than a powered one for someone whose arms work but whose legs don't. They cannot see how much it holds back everything you do. If I knew how useful (some) powerchairs were I would have had one even before I was paralysed! Ok well maybe not!