How far would you go to walk again?

Angela Oakley is organizing this fundraiser.

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In progress....

So Australia mates??

Looks like I will be traveling to Sydney Australia this summer, which is terrifying as a wheelchair user, for an experimental surgery that will allow me to walk again. The surgery, osseointegration, places a titanium implant up the remaining femur, leaving the end sticking out of the skin for the prosthetic to attach to. Compared to traditional socket prosthetics this allows weight bearing through your bones and joints as normal, improving your ability to weight bear as normal.

I've had endless issues since my above knee amputation in 2021 that have made traditional prosthetics with sockets impossible. I'm at 44 surgeries total now on this leg, 60+ blood transfusions (its bad when you loose count right?), and months upon months of IV antibiotics causing irreparable damage to my body. Leaving me wheelchair dependent. I was initially accepted into a local clinical trial for the osseointegration procedure, but am now being denied it due to complications after the revisions surgeries they did last summer. I know they need positive outcomes for their trial to be approved, and I am too risky. But I wouldn't have to travel or spend anything out of pocket if they would just let me back into the local trial

Instead 100K dollars and 6 weeks in Australia, but I will be walking at the end of it. Selling my house, living with my parents for the foreseeable future untill I get "back on my feet" is the closest option I have to raising the funds to cover it. Travel expenses alone are around 10K. It sucks as I need to walk to work feasibly, but I need to work to be able to afford to walk..

The discrimination I have faced from vet med as a wheelchair user has been horrific and demeaning, and while I am working to try to change that, it doesn't happen overnight. I have dedicated my entire life to being the vet I am, I love the profession and want nothing more then to be part of it, to feel that I belong again and have value.

I've been off work completely since 2022 due to the progressive issues in my leg and surgeries required to fix them. The seven surgeries last summer fixed most of the issues I had, but then caused some new problems, leaving me still reliant 100% on a wheelchair. While we have tried traditional sockets again, they still will not work and cause too much pain.