Join Beau's Fight for Mobility and Independence

It’s a bright, summer day on the First Baptist Church Daycare playground when I spotted my big bubba (brother) on the other side of the playground fence walking down the sidewalk. You see, he’s 8 years older than me and that particular day, his age group took a walk down to the old Hastee Tastee on Canal Street for ice cream (which I was entirely jealous of, by the way). Elation filled my 5-year-old heart to see his face because if you knew me, you knew that I either wanted my sister or my brother at daycare. I called his name and ran as fast as my little white Keds would carry when, all of a sudden, I tripped right before I had made it to the iron fence falling head first into it. Laying on the ground dazed and confused with a huge laceration to my forehead, before I knew it, my brother had cleared the fence and scooped me up running with me in his arms to get help. You see, that’s what he’s always been to me my whole life, my Hero. From putting bandaids on my bobo’s to letting me sleep in his floor even when it wasn’t “cool” when I had nightmares.

So how could it be years later in 2012 sitting in the ER waiting room that my Hero was being diagnosed with brain cancer that was inoperable due to its location. The words replayed in my head for days, maybe even weeks since it all seems like a blur, over and over not wanting to resonate or become a reality. Until this day, I still want to wake up to find that I’m just a little girl again waking up and it was all just a nightmare. But sometimes, this life we live is cruel. CANCER IS CRUEL. It starts little by little chipping away at your body until you are too exhausted to manage daily tasks or, at times, enjoy life. The treatments used to keep you alive are the same ones killing you. Causing extreme exhaustion where maintaining a daily job becomes nothing more but that of a distant memory, mouth sores that make even the favorite foods unappealing because it is too painful to eat, or when simply walking outside on uneven terrain is too much of a fall risk due to left-sided paralysis. Simply putting one foot in front of the other is taken for granted day in and day out. It’s a redundant, effortless locomotion for most. But for Beau, his paralysis is starting to strip away small joys. Like walking to the pasture with his children to feed and water their horse, Molly Girl or adventuring out into the great outdoors of hunting and fishing as it has become too cumbersome and too much of a fall risk.

Yesterday, there was a setback that occurred. When attempting to walk right past the edge of his garage, he tripped and fell fracturing his distal clavicle and displacing his AC joint. Although this setback isn’t ideal, “Faith is the bird that sings when the dawn is still dark.”

All those years of my Hero protecting me, I want to help try to protect him. Help protect him from falling when he wants to go out in his own yard with his family. Protect him mentally and emotionally by giving him access to his passion of being in the great outdoors. An All-Terrain Track Chair could help do that but unfortunately, insurance considers a Track Chair to be a “recreational device” and is not covered. Costs of the chair start at upwards of $15,000. He has no idea I’m writing this but I want to possibly be his Hero for once by safely giving him his mobility and independence again in the great outdoors making memories with his family for years to come…