Help for "Chuck" AKA Brandon
Hi, I'm Caitlin, Brandon's sister. As some may know and many do not, my brother Brandon suffered a closed spinal cord injury in a dirt biking accident in 2015 leaving him paralyzed from the nipples down. If you know Brandon you know that the accident set him back but only briefly. In less than a year post-accident he was back doing what he loves, riding his dirt bike, with modification made by our oldest brother Logan and friends to accommodate his disability and shortly thereafter he went back to working full-time. Brandon pushed himself more to train for an opportunity of a lifetime; to compete in the Winter X-Games in 2018 and 2020 and placing 3rd both times. Brandon has proven that his disability does not slow him down a bit and he refuses to take life for granted. He is deserving of so much except what he has been faced with over the past year.
Brandon has been dealing with an injury/illness since August 2020 and became serious in November 2020 taking him out of work by his physician beginning in December. His healing progressed to a point where both he and his physician thought that his returning to work for 5 hour days would help with his mental status while not jeopardizing the healing progress made to that point. Just 3 weeks of working only 5 hours a days rendered him into being removed from work once again by his physician because his issue began to rear its ugly head again. In order for Brandon to get back to work and his quality of life, as he knows it, he made the very difficult decision to "bite the bullet" and have a surgical procedure done that will put this behind him. However, having the procedure done will keep him out of work for another 7-10 weeks. Brandon has been able to utilize his short-term disability insurance through his work so that he was receiving some income, even though it was only a percentage of his normal pay. A couple weeks ago, his short-term disability insurance representative informed him that he did not qualify for Long-Term Disability because he had worked those 3 weeks less than 30-hours a week :(
Luckily Brandon is still on my mom's health insurance until the end of August and my parents have been helping with co-pays and medical bills. However he still has living expenses since he lives on his own; vehicle insurance, rent, electricity, gas to/from doctor's appointment, tolls, etc. My hope is that we can all help him continue to have his independence and not stress himself out worrying about paying bills because of no income. Believe me when I say we have looked into every avenue we can think of to get him help and all those avenues have turned into dead-ends which is why I decided to create this page. I know Brandon won't be happy with me for creating this page, but.................... if anyone is deserving of a little help it most definitely is Brandon. Since he is too proud to ask anyone for help with anything, including his own family I figured I would try to solicit some help for him.
I thank you in advance for everything and all of your support. God Bless!