Wheels get mum moving

It’s been years since Lisa Wheeler could properly go shopping with her daughter. Now, a new device is helping them hang out just like they used to. By

ON a recent day out, 13-year-old Sienna Wheeler and her mum Lisa browsed the car boot sale, went shopping for ballet tights, shopped some more, bought sushi to eat in the park, met Sienna’s dad and their dog for a drink at a cafe, and walked home through the park.

It may seem a pretty normal outing for a teenage girl and her mum, but for the Wheelers it was a first.

Previously the crippling, debilitating effects of multiple sclerosis would have made an outing like this a frustrating and painful experience for mum Lisa Wheeler.

That was until she got her Omeo. The innovative mobility device has transformed the family’s life and given Sienna her mum back. Working on the principles of a Segway, and using body movement, the Omeo allows hands-free mobility.

‘‘She’s free. She smiles more. She’s more brave than before (she cries less). She wants to do stuff, and she does the stuff she wants to do. I’m really proud of her!’’ Sienna said.

It has been a hard-fought journey. With no help from public health, the family has spent months fundraising for the device, Sienna even busking on the pavements of Blenheim.

For the teenager, a life with multiple sclerosis is her ‘normal’. ‘‘She doesn’t know any different. It must be hard, you know, I never had to help my mother,’’ Lisa Wheeler said, reflecting on how her daughter has adjusted.

Sienna’s day starts at 6.30am, when she joins her mum in bed for a cuddle. Then she draws back the bedsheets, picks Lisa’s feet up and sets them on the floor, before helping her mum out of bed to start the day.

The decline has been slow, and Sienna remembers a time when they enjoyed tobogganing down the slopes, going on wilderness tramps and attending Irish dancing classes together.

Lisa Wheeler was diagnosed in 2002, six years before Sienna’s birth. At first, the tingling in her extremities was little more than an annoyance, but as time passed the disease gradually encroached on her mobility and independence.

‘‘We lived on a farm, and it had a really steep driveway, and I remember sometimes not wanting to walk up and down for school and wanting Mum to use the car,’’ Sienna said.

‘‘Instead, she would sometimes walk down to meet me. Then it was getting too hard, so I had to open gates while we’d drive down. And then we moved because it was too hard at that house.’’

The family moved to Blenheim in 2015, hoping the flatter terrain would make moving around easier for Lisa.

Soon after, they went for a walk. ‘‘My husband had to piggyback me home,’’ said Lisa Wheeler. ‘‘That was the first indicator that it had really progressed.’’

Helping her mum comes naturally to Sienna, and the mum and daughter have a strong bond.

‘‘I’ll help Mum get out of bed, I’ve learned to put a wheelchair in the back of the car, I’ll carry her phone and her keys, take her food to the table, fetch her glasses, and go into the supermarket for the groceries,’’ Sienna said.

She has had to pick her mum up from the floor several times when she has fallen, and recalls a time when Lisa was late picking her up from a ballet class.

‘‘Mum wasn’t there, and I was

trying to call, and I was really worried that she had fallen over, because Dad wasn’t at home either. Then I saw three ambulances go by, and I got really scared,’’ Sienna said. It turns out Lisa had simply got the pick-up time wrong.

On the Saturday before her Omeo arrived, Lisa and Sienna spent just one hour in town.

‘‘I was exhausted and sore and annoyed and grumpy, because if I sit for 15 minutes in a wheelchair,

I get sore,’’ said Lisa Wheeler. ‘‘Sienna does her very best to push me and be helpful, but because she can’t see where she’s going, I’m ramming into this and that, and saying ‘Oh, look out, hold on, watch it!’ So I’m nervous the whole time because I’m not in control of myself.’’

In contrast, last week the pair went to town to buy some jeans for Sienna, but ended up spending hours browsing.

One week after getting the

Omeo, Lisa Wheeler said she and husband Andrew walked into town and had dinner.

‘‘It’s the first time in six years we’ve ever done that, and it was just magic!’’

As the family looks forward to theatre outings and other activities they have missed over the past six years, their 12-year-old dog Matai might be ruing the day the Omeo arrived.

‘‘We’re wearing out the dog!’’ Lisa said.