Get Angie back on the fast track to life!
Donation protected
Angie is a smart, vivacious, lovely young woman from a small city in Colombia near Cali. She's a single Mom, and her son Juan Manuel is the centre of her life.
In mid-November 2018, she was completing her second semester of nurse's training when she blacked out at home and was rushed to the nearest urban medical facility in Palmira, where a life-threatening blood clot was discovered.
Surgeons intervened successfully to save her life. Angie was in a coma for several days, and awoke to what she called 'a most unpleasant surprise'. In order to save her, the medical team had been forced to amputate both her legs above the knees, and her left hand above the wrist.
Angie spent much of the following year in what she describes not surprisingly as 'the deepest depression I have ever known'. Despite that, she came out fighting, with the Iconic Angie Smile, on the left a month later, on the right in March 2019 in her first days at rehab two years ago.
Angie is now home with her family and has been fitted with advanced prosthetic legs. However, Colombia has only minimal social support services, and her home town has none. There are therapists there, but she cannot afford transportation or fees, and an electric wheelchair is not an all-terrain vehicle. We are hoping to raise $3,000 (Canadian) to help pay for her ongoing access to services, and to purchase her an electric scooter that will afford her freedom of movement around town.
Surprisingly perhaps, what bothers her most is not the huge physical challenge she faces, or her visible differences. She isn't ashamed of her appearance in the slightest, and still tears around town - to the extent that the COVID lockdown permits - with her pals. But she has no independent resources and what she has go to her son. She says, "None of the rest of this would be so difficult if it weren't for the lack of financial resources. "
She needs more down the road. Employment for someone in her situation will be very hard to find, and she has had to abandon her nursing ambitions. Eventually, she will need help getting herself back on a new life track.
But a scooter will be the first step onto that track.
Angie only speaks Spanish but is a mean hand with Google Translate. She has an Instagram account at ospina_angie .
In mid-November 2018, she was completing her second semester of nurse's training when she blacked out at home and was rushed to the nearest urban medical facility in Palmira, where a life-threatening blood clot was discovered.
Surgeons intervened successfully to save her life. Angie was in a coma for several days, and awoke to what she called 'a most unpleasant surprise'. In order to save her, the medical team had been forced to amputate both her legs above the knees, and her left hand above the wrist.
Angie spent much of the following year in what she describes not surprisingly as 'the deepest depression I have ever known'. Despite that, she came out fighting, with the Iconic Angie Smile, on the left a month later, on the right in March 2019 in her first days at rehab two years ago.
Angie is now home with her family and has been fitted with advanced prosthetic legs. However, Colombia has only minimal social support services, and her home town has none. There are therapists there, but she cannot afford transportation or fees, and an electric wheelchair is not an all-terrain vehicle. We are hoping to raise $3,000 (Canadian) to help pay for her ongoing access to services, and to purchase her an electric scooter that will afford her freedom of movement around town.
Surprisingly perhaps, what bothers her most is not the huge physical challenge she faces, or her visible differences. She isn't ashamed of her appearance in the slightest, and still tears around town - to the extent that the COVID lockdown permits - with her pals. But she has no independent resources and what she has go to her son. She says, "None of the rest of this would be so difficult if it weren't for the lack of financial resources. "
She needs more down the road. Employment for someone in her situation will be very hard to find, and she has had to abandon her nursing ambitions. Eventually, she will need help getting herself back on a new life track.
But a scooter will be the first step onto that track.
Angie only speaks Spanish but is a mean hand with Google Translate. She has an Instagram account at ospina_angie .
Organizer
Eric Morse
Organizer
Toronto, ON