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Crutches for Michael

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I posted on Facebook a couple of days ago about a fall that I took that minorly injured me but majorly injured my crutches. It has rendered one of them completely unusable.

Trying to get around the last couple of days using just the one working crutch has been difficult to say the least. More falls have occurred and back pain is par for the course. I need the pair.

Several internet searches to find a suitable replacement for the broken part have, surprisingly and annoyingly, come up with nothing. The idea of trying to repair the crutch has been tossed around, but my past experience with that has never yielded positive results for very long, if ever. This leaves me one option, complete replacement. 

Medicare will cover 80% of the cost of a pair of new crutches. The downfall is they will only cover a pair they arbitrarily deem to be "medically necessary". I know from years of experience that that is, a pair of generic aluminum crutches that was never constructed or intended to be used for as long or as hard as I use them. I like to be as active as my able-bodied friends and family as much as I can (it's like I like to, y'know, live!) and these types of crutches are Ill suited for that lifestyle. Experience tells me I would be back in the same predicament I find myself in today in about 6 months. This is a less than ideal solution to say the least.

That leaves crutches obtained from other retailers and paid for completely out of pocket. There are crutches out there made for my sort of permanent usage lifestyle that can handle all the stress someone like me puts them through day in and day out. While the pair I was using till now are made of titanium and are several years old at this point, today they are made of materials like carbon fiber rather than aluminum to be both durable and light-weight and have features like hand grips designed to be ergonomic so as to cause as little to no wrist injury as possible just from daily use of essentially walking on my hands.

Having done extensive research on these types of crutches over the years, one company stands out as, what I feel would be, a good fit for me. That company is: SideStix.

The hurdle here becomes cost. I need crutches. That is a non-negotiable fact. These crutches, while nearly prohibitively expensive for me, are my best option for sustaining the lifestyle I have spent years cultivating and will fight tooth-and-nail to protect. I'll be damned if I will become a shut-in or an invalid before my time. 

In these couple of days since the accident some dear friends have reached out and, extremely generously and graciously, offered to assist me in covering the cost of whatever I need. I've been encouraged to write this GoFundMe to that end so that those people, and any others who similarly wish to assist, have a place to pool resources and contribute. I was resistant at first because, growing up the way I did, independence was a luxury I couldn't always afford and so I tend to fight for it when I can. I was made to see this was solely my pride speaking and that I need to let it go and allow people who care about me show their caring in, what is admittedly for me, a time of need. So this is me asking, if you can, please help me walk again.

Thank you for reading. And thank you for caring. God bless.

Organizer

Michael Oakes
Organizer
Nashville-Davidson, TN

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