I need major help!

Hi, I'm Ricky. I'm a former Paralympic athlete and now a comedian. For information, I have cerebral palsy.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Despite this, the procedure is not seem as priority by the NHS which is why there is such a wait.

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.

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.

I'm embarrassed to be asking but honestly, the fear of what might happen outweighs that embarrassment so here I am.

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.

Thank you for reading this and if you do share and / or donate I thank you, truly, from the bottom of my heart.