Best-Laid Plans

I’ve been a magazine editor for more than, you know, a few days, and I’ve seen more
than a few editorial plans go awry. Most editorial emergencies on a monthly publication
aren’t exactly DEFCON 1, so you work out a Plan B, and life goes on.

Every so often, though, one of my
stories will, uh, completely jump
the tracks. Go rogue. Turn right at
Albuquerque.

When I create our editorial
calendar each summer for the
coming year, I develop feature
story premises that serve as road
maps for what the stories will be about. I make plans.

And then, complex rehab technology happens. Such is the case with this month’s issue,
our annual Ultimate Seating Guide.

My clever plan was for the main feature story to discuss “accommodation vs. intervention”
in seating. The idea was to explore when, why and how a seating team should elect
to accommodate a client’s present posture, and when the team should instead seek to
intervene to prevent a postural problem from progressing.

In my defense, I never meant this to be a showdown in Batman vs. Superman style. I
didn’t think accommodation was superior to intervention, or vice versa, and I imagined
that for many wheelchair users, the two strategies co-existed. Perhaps, for example, a
seating team would decide to support a client’s current posture while hoping to stop or
slow any postural progression.

It was a nice plan. Then complex rehab seating happened.

In talking with Stephanie Tanguay, clinical education specialist for Motion Concepts, I
learned that complex seating is, yes, complex. In practical terms, there is always accommodation,
and not just of the client’s postural situation. Where I’d been looking for a neat
distinction between the two philosophies, Steph pointed out there’s a lot more gray than
black and white. Read what Jay has to say on page 18.

I am happy to say that our ever-popular Wheelchair Cushion Comparo went according
to plan: It’s our yearly pictorial and statistical comparison of many of today’s leading
Lee Ann Hoffman (page 24) and The lift is designed for lighter-weight wheelchairs and scooters.