Thread: Asking for a bit of help

Hi you all. Some of you might know me as Nevyn Kaldaka from the Battlefield 2142 servers or as [SsT] Isarde. I'm not one to share much personal details, just my nature, but I figured I could come here to maybe ask for some help. My brother is physically disabled from Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, a genetic, currently incurable disease which eats away at the muscles. He's been wheelchair bound for just over 15 years, and in a power wheelchair for most of it. In order to leave the house, we have a wheelchair accessible van to take him out and around places, such as his many doctors or the movies, or even out to dinner. The conversions to make such a vehicle are expensive, around 25 thousand dollars. Not including the price of the vehicle. We've set up a gofundme to try and get some money to help us pay for the conversion. I know not everyone will have spare money to donate, but any amount will help. Thank you all so much in advance.

403 Forbidden

I don't know why the link is changing to 403 Forbidden, it still works just fine.

My younger brother died from it @ 21 some 40 years ago so I know the hardships we only had an old manual wheelchair but we managed. Have ya'll approached the MDA although they were little to no help for us but the association was much smaller then, they did send him to camp one year. I'll do what I can but right now all I can offer is my hopes and prayers.

I'm sorry to hear that. And yeah, we have. We've gotten a lot of help from them over the years, but there's only so much they can do, you know? He's gone to camp a couple of years, but now its so hard for him to do much of any traveling. Can't hold himself up on his own. We just recently had a bunch of friends over to play Halo, and he was struggling with the controllers. He can still use a mouse and keyboard alright, but still...

Does your insurance cover any of this?

Unfortunately, because its Medicare/Medical, it doesn't cover any of it. They help out with a lot of medications and doctor visits, but not something like this.

Best of luck Isarde to you and your family! I hope you guys are able to reach your goal!

Tossing this out there as an idea, you may look for a used vehicle that is a few years older. I know my best friends grandfather just sold his wheelchair van because he really didn't leave the farm unless in someone else's vehicle. So you may get lucky and find a nice lightly used rig for less than getting one made up. Not sure if that would work for your circumstance or not, but worth the mention. Sorry to hear but best wishes!

We did look into a couple of the used vehicles that they had there at the place, but because of the cost of the conversion, the price of a new vehicle only saves us a bit on the price. We actually did decide to go with the Red Van there, and its fantastic to drive compared to the old van we had. It has a much lowered floor board, so we can actually see out of the rear view mirror. Its amazing. (Normally, my brother's head was right smack dab in the middle of that thing, in our old van)

But yeah, the price difference was about 10 thousand dollars, basically the price of a "new-Used" (One year old van, with about 12k miles, converted into the Wheelchair van) versus the 2010 Van.

I was aiming more for the already converted used van kinda thing. But I totally understand why you went with a new one. Good luck!