Help Elena Get an Accessible Van

I am asking for any amount of money that anyone can give so that we can put a down payment on a reliable, accessible vehicle for my mom, Elena. We will be forever grateful to be able to get her and my dad into a safe and reliable car and out of a financially risky situation.

This is Elena. She is a grandmother, a wife, a sister, a daughter, a friend, a teacher, and most importantly to me and my brothers, our mom. She also happens to be disabled. As a child, she was diagnosed with a degenerative nerve disorder called Charcot-Marie-Tooth Syndrome (named after doctors, not teeth) which over the years has put her into a wheelchair full time and with extremely limited use of her hands and lower arms and no use of her legs and feet.

Not many people realize how expensive and how challenging it is to be disabled. Private insurance pays very little for assistive technology like motorized wheelchairs or handicapped accessible vehicles, both of which can reach hundreds of thousands of dollars. While she could get more paid if she didn't work and could qualify for disability through Medicaid, she needs to work. My mother is fiercely independent, and when you lose the power to be physically independent, it is easy to spiral into depressive states. She needs the mental stimulation of work. As we know, teachers’ salaries are embarrassingly low, and rural high school special education teachers are even worse. But, with the help of my dad to get her out of the door, she shows up to work, not for the money but because she can forget about her physical challenges and thrive in a situation where she can rely on her mental strength to help teach and guide her students. Many of which rely on her as an example of what not being defined by their disability looks like.

The last few years have been tough for her and our family. She was alone in the hospital for more than half a year on a ventilator in 2020 for pancreatitis and sepsis. Then after she recovered, my dad retired so he would have more time to dedicate to caring for her, the house, and his family. Luckily she was able to keep her job during this time but wasn’t getting paid. Most of their income is now being dumped into the extensive medical bills from her stay. Shortly after she was released from the hospital, her handicapped accessible van broke down. These cars aren’t like normal cars where you can just send them to any repair shop. There are very few places that can repair them, and due to the pandemic, parts for her discontinued van are hard to come by. It has been over a year, and they still don’t have their van back. Unfortunately, they are out of city limits, so she can’t access the public transit, and she can’t just hop in anyone's car. So, they have been relying on a very old, very unreliable bus they bought for a couple of thousand dollars from a retirement home. It gets them from A to B, but it is not safe, and with winter coming, it could leave her and my dad stranded in some pretty dangerous situations.

The point of the story is she needs a reliable vehicle. A new van can cost upwards of $80,000, but she has found a used van that is in good shape for $55,000. As of now, the plan is to sell the broken-down van and unreliable bus to get what cash we can. We will use that and our savings to put a down payment. Unfortunately, that barely makes a dent. Their monthly income is low, so we need to keep the monthly payments as low as possible, which means we need to put down as much as possible. I am asking for any amount of money that anyone can give so that we can put that towards the down payment. We will be forever grateful to be able to get her and my dad into a safe and reliable car and out of a financially risky situation.