Get Jack Going

Hi my name is Gemma, I have started this Go Fund Me page to help 3 close friends of mine. Jack and his two amazing mums Phil and Rozie.

About Jack…

Jack is 18 years old. He has a range of complex medical needs and learning needs effecting his health, mobility and learning needs. Jack is reliant on an adult to meet his intense care needs 24hrs a day. These needs are met by family or a team of nurses that provide support in the home. As a young man Jack needs some independence. As a manual chair user he cannot currently move around himself. He needs to ask an adult for everything when he wants to move around his home and the community. He also requires specialist equipment to enable him to stand and relive pressure from parts of his body from sitting all day. This wheelchair would give him more opportunity to stand alongside his friends when accessing his favourite clubs, activities and family days out. This gives him the chance to be at the zoo and have some control over what he goes to look at without relying on his family and care team. Not only this but the health benefits to him being able to have easy access to changes in position would hopefully help to strengthen his muscles.

Jack has congenial myotonic dystrophy which is a degenerative muscle wasting condition, neurofibromatosis type 1 these results in many comorbid conditions such as having a pilocytic astrocytoma brain tumour, multiple plexiform tumours causing pain throughout his body, respiratory failure requiring a variety of daily medical interventions including nebuliser, deep suctioning of the airway, use of a non-invasive ventilator and cough assist machine, he has a gastrostomy to help drain his stomach of fluids and air, he has a jejunostomy to allow medications to be administered directly into the bowel, he also has a central line to allow all nutrition to be administered into a central vein in the heart. He requires different medications to be administered every 2 hours throughout the day and night as well as a multitude of others needs, and intervention requirements.

Jack sometimes has to spend months in hospital missing out on so much.

Despite all his daily challenges, pain and medical interventions, Jack has a zest for life and loves to be out and about so this chair would provide him with a wealth of opportunities not currently open to him

About his parents…

Phil and Rozie fostered Jack when he was 3 years old and adopted him when he was 9 years old. I watch them devoting their whole lives to Jack and their other foster/adopted children, never giving themselves a break. having a chair like this for Jack will take a massive strain off of them as well as give Jack some much needed independence for the first time.

Anything you can spare would be amazing. The chairs are £20,000-£25,000 so we have a long way to go

love to you all Gemma xx