{"id":73865,"date":"2025-09-19T18:25:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T18:25:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/73865\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T18:25:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T18:25:12","slug":"new-state-of-the-art-wheelchair-allows-paralyzed-kerry-man-to-raise-himself-to-standing-position","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/73865\/","title":{"rendered":"New state-of-the-art wheelchair allows paralyzed Kerry man to raise himself to standing position"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Killarney man Ian O'Connell with his new wheelchair that allows him to elevate himself to a standing position.\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/4ceb43a5-a658-476e-8788-1c61eb11d238.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Killarney man Ian O&#8217;Connell with his new wheelchair that allows him to elevate himself to a standing position.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Killarney\u2019s Ian O\u2019Connell took to social media this week to show off his new state-of-the-art wheelchair which allows him to raise himself into a standing position.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Ian was left wheelchair bound after a devastating cycling accident when he was just 16 years old in Killarney National Park.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Posting about his new wheelchair on social media, Ian said that being able to raise himself up into a standing position is \u201cvital\u201d for someone like him with a spinal cord injury as it helps with numerous things such as blood flow, muscle and joint health, skin health, digestion and respiratory just to name a few.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">&#8220;Imagine sitting in one position 99% of the time and then standing up, the feeling is unbelievable,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Ian\u2019s post was flooded with congratulatory comments and well-wishes from his followers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">&#8220;Fantastic piece of equipment hope it helps you. Delighted to see this as the saying goes onwards and upwards\u201d wrote one person while another added \u201cIan, you&#8217;re proving that with the right tools and mindset, anything is possible! Keep standing out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Follow the Ian O\u2019Connell Trust Facebook page to keep up with Ian\u2019s story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Killarney man Ian O&#8217;Connell with his new wheelchair that allows him to elevate himself to a standing position.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73866,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[18,117,887,19,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-73865","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-fergus-dennehy","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}