Hello, my name is Kyle. Several years ago I had the unfortunate experience of falling while at work and it would change my life forever. It was a simple fall, no real damage, or so I thought. I finished out the day of work like nothing had happened because I didn't know that anything had happened. I had apparently torn a tendon in my hand which over the next few days had become incredibly swollen and excruciatingly painful. Turns out the fluid buildup in my hand had bred several nasty infections. Fast forward a month and I had been rushed to two different hospitals, the first an er and the second a specialist fighting to save my hand who performed emergency surgery. So ordeal over everything's fine I'm good as new.... far from it. After being sent home from the hospital and returning to everyday life I started noticing a pain in my hip. Subtle at first but becoming so severe that after two weeks I could not walk, I could no longer stand and I could hardly take a breath without hysterically crying so back to the emergency room. Turns out the infection had spread from my hand and settled inside my hip but was dormant and had not spread or caused any type of damage until everyday life had caused stress and inflammation which caused a rapid spreading of the infection. Fast forward again and it's now a year later, another two hospitals, 29 surgeries and just under 9 months in total laid up in hospital beds and I have 70% less of my hip than when I started and I have 3 inches cut off my femur on the same side. Over the next several years that has caused a whole slew of other medical problems as well and has forced me to need to use a wheelchair to get around. Here's the part of the story where i found some solace, inspiration and strength and the reason for why I'm making this go fund me. After all was said and done and I was finally home for good from the hospital albeit disabled I needed to find something to do to pass time while I recuperated and learned what I could and couldn't do anymore but I wanted to find something that i both enjoyed and would be useful to me in my new journey. The biggest hurdle I was going to face now would be mobility. You can only go so far in a wheelchair and you can only get there not so quickly. I was incredibly passionate about small engines and atvs, utvs dirt bikes and everything of that sort but those aren't practical forms of inner city transportation so I started researching and learning about electric scooters. I became incredibly passionate about this topic because I could see the benefit to me if I could find the right one, with a seat of course because I can't exactly stand at this point. I originally bought a cheap no name scooter from ebay that was a damaged unopened box for literal pennies. I read everything I could about it and other similar scooters and over the course of months, because I have no income at this point, I disassembled and replaced nearly the entire scooter and learned how everything works and what everything does and how it does it and became even more fascinated in the world of e vehicles but I could not ride it because, one it didn't have a seat and two it was made for children and couldn't begin to carry my weight but I was able to resell it and get just enough to buy a scooter that could carry me. Only problem was in that price range it also didn't come with a seat or any features at all that one would need to use for nearly full time transportation especially being down a hip and part of a femur. So again over the course of months I disassembled and rebuilt the scooter to suit my needs. I added suspension to ease the pain caused by all the bumps, I added a seat to be able to actually ride the scooter and added all necessary lights to ride on public roadways as well as a locking trunk so I could use it for small errands and groceries. At this point I've been resigned to my wheelchair for a couple of years and I'm starting to feel less and less like a normal human and more like everything is a chore. I'm losing energy for life and I'm not going out much or doing anything at all really because it's just too much work. I don't really smile or laugh much anymore and life is just becoming boring and unfulfilling until I took my first ride on that finished scooter. For the time in years I felt alive again. I felt normal and unjudged. I felt like life didn't have to be so hard anymore. I smiled and laughed the whole time. I had no destination but I rode until I had just enough battery to make it back. Fast forward another couple of years and I've put hundreds and hundreds of not thousands of miles in this scooter. I've done things and gone places I thought I never would again. I've used it for everyday tasks and just for fun and has served me well and been a reason to not give up. Unfortunately this past summer the scooter finally died and I don't have to funds to rebuild it and it's now far outdated anyways and I certainly don't have the funds to replace it but I don't want to go without that lifeline that I built for myself. That thing I was so proud of and enjoyed so much. That thing that made my life liveable again. So I'm making this gofundme in hopes that I can raise enough money to buy a new scooter that will suit all my needs and allow me the chance to take my freedom back once again. Thank you for your time!