<div>Hi, I'm Ricky. I'm a former Paralympic athlete and now a comedian. For information, I have cerebral palsy.
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<div>I had major surgery when I was 10 on my spine. This involved taking some of my spine out, operating on my spinal cord and then fusing the spine back together.
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<div>After years of walking the way I do and injuries from sport it's been discovered that the area above and below where the surgeons fused my spine back together have now started failing.
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<div>My spine is now, basically, crumbling away and getting worse day by day. There is a procedure available where they first inject a series of steroids into the spine and then a series of injections where they put this gel in that sets and acts as a shock absorber to help the disks do their job.
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<div>The wait on the NHS is, best case, 12 - 18 months. The fact that this is a degenerative condition means, by that time, my back could well be in a much worse state and if left untreated could even cause paralysis.
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<div>Despite this, the procedure is not seem as priority by the NHS which is why there is such a wait.
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<div>The procedure is available privately (of course it is) and if I go down that route I could have it done almost straight away - literally I could have it done within a week. The procedure costs just over £8,000 and I just don't have that money.
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<div>I won't lie, the risk of the long term degeneration of this and the potential outcome of that scares the life out of me.
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<div>I'm embarrassed to be asking but honestly, the fear of what might happen outweighs that embarrassment so here I am.
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<div>I'd be so incredibly grateful if you could donate anything you can. I understand times are hard for everyone right now so if you can't afford to donate I completely understand but would ask you to share this plea.
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<div>Thank you for reading this and if you do share and / or donate I thank you, truly, from the bottom of my heart.
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