An inspiring story

Our customer Andy, an ex-British Army Veteran shares his story on how a Levo C3 has changed his world.

“I’m Andy a 45-year-old Veteran of the British Army, I left in 1998. I required back surgery on my L5-S1 (the disc which separates the lumbar spinal region from the sacrum) intervertebral disc in 2006 and used crutches to get around.” Shares Andy.

“With weight gain it trashed my shoulders (they aren’t designed to do the things my hips did). In Feb 2014 due to another old Army injury as I was coming down stairs using crutches my right shoulder dislocated and I bounced down the stairs severing my already weakened spinal cord at L5-S1.” Continues Andy.

The Levo C3

“I was given on loan a big standard powerchair but this meant using my shoulders a lot with crutches to stand up, get things from shelves and such, this had a result of causing my shoulders to dislocate about 4 to 5 times per day. To relieve this problem as I was under a surgical consultant and I asked SSAFA, a military charity to fund a Levo C3 standing powerchair as the surgeon rightly said “we can’t guarantee the surgery will work without this kind of chair”‘.

It’s changed my world

“In August of 2017 I took delivery of my Levo C3 and it’s changed my world. I can get to top shelves, I can meet people at their height and most importantly: I could stand when I took my vows when I married my wife in 2018, this brought tears to mine, my wife’s and a couple of other people’s eyes as they’d witnessed my struggles beforehand.” 

“My experience with the staff at Gerald Simonds was great from Andrew the rep, to Mark the wheelchair engineer. It’s been great. The best thing in the world to someone like me (now I’m Quadriplegic) is to be able to stand and do things I used to take for granted, to get as normal as possible with a powerchair assist.”