I’m going to be entirely honest, when I started this page I didn’t expect any donations, never mind making my £4000 goal a reality in barely a month. The generosity and support of the amazing community around me has given me the confidence to increase my goal to £8000 so I can get the motorised component to add to the chair to make my life easier on bad tic days and bad weather.

I did not expect this support so quickly and I definitely do not expect any more, I’m mainly increasing the goal to show you the reality of so many people who are disabled’s lives. We don’t dare tell our true targets or everything we need as if we ask for too much we fear we’ll get nothing.

We’re having a few more charitable events in the next few months including a boxing match at Brandon’s boxing club, and hopefully an event at the fabulous Daisy Rose in Belmont. I’m genuinely overwhelmed by the support I’ve received so far and thank you so much. I’m going to be able to get my chair!! Which is such a big thing.

I still fully intend on paying it forward if we make it over my goal (and I sure hope we do!) because it’s genuinely disgusting how many disabled people have to crowdfund equipment they can’t live without. I can‘t emphasise enough how grateful I am for everyone who is supporting me, and want everyone who is crowdfunding to feel the same way.

Still getting used to the tourette‘s, a week after my 18th birthday, the tics took over my legs to a degree where I can‘t get around long distances without a wheelchair. The jouney from my bedroom to the bathroom is a 5 minute trip on a good day and impossible to do alone on a bad one. The NHS offered us crutches or a walker but due to my tourette’s using them would be impossible, but as the NHS doesn’t provide wheelchairs we had to buy one ourselves.

Being in the chair for almost 5 months now we’ve had to stop considering this a short-term fluke and instead a permanant factor in my day-to-day life. The chair I have now gets me from A to B, but that’s about it. It’s heavy, large, hard to push, hard to brake, uncomfortable, unajustable, and it reminds me constantly that I can‘t do things as easy now.

I want to get a new chair, something lighter, measured to me, easy to push and transport to places, light, and something that is less of a wheelchair and more an enabaling device that lets me do the same thing as other people, just in a different way.

The issue with a proper wheelchair that’s made for the customer, versus the general ones you see in hospitals, is that because they‘re made to last and usually made to order, they don‘t come cheap. I need this chair soon, as next year I aim to go to university and the goal is that I’ll be dependent - right now I can’t even use a zebra crossing or go up kirbs without someone to pull me up as my current chair is too heavy to do a wheelie and I can’t spin around in the middle of a road to reverse up onto the path.

Anything that is donated would be a massive help, and if miraculously I get over my target, I’ll donate the excess to other people like me who need disability aids and the like.