Offroad Wheelchair For Rita Borg

UPDATE AGAIN: Can hardly believe it but, in only two days we're now £850 over our initial target. This is just amazing. Rita is absolutely over the moon and can't stop saying thank you, and she's so happy that she's definitely getting the wheelchair that only a few days ago seemed like a pipe dream! It will give her independence and adventure again and I don't think I've seen her so happy in the entire past year, so a huge thank you to everyone who donated, shared or otherwise supported. She can't wait for her appointment with the wheelchair technician next Thursday!

The extra money will definitely help with the hidden costs of getting the wheelchair, insuring it, getting it serviced and so on. At this point it might be enough to be a big help for something else too that she needs but hadn't even started thinking seriously about, like adapting the car to make getting the wheelchair in and out possible for her (as she couldn't currently do it) or potentially even an electric daychair for urban use, something that she needs but has been such a low priority compared to getting out into nature. She has lots of ideas and also welcomes suggestions! 

 Thank you all so so much again - you have made such a big difference to her life and we are all beyond thrilled to see it.

UPDATE: As you can see we, amazingly, smashed our target the same day we put up the fundraiser. Rita is in shock and can't really believe that her offroad wheelchair, which seemed like a bit of a pipe dream, is suddenly completely attainable. Donations are still coming in so I will leave this up for now, as any extra can go towards unforseen expenses or wheelchair adaptions like a car ramp or boot hoist. Thank you all so much! We'll be sure to put up some photos and videos of her getting herself into ridiculous places in the great outdoors this summer. Rita has an appointment with a wheelchair technician next Thursday (14th) when we'll hopefully be able to work out a plan.

Summary: Rita is really really ill. She isn’t able to stand long enough to walk, get herself a glass of water, or make a slice of toast. She currently cannot leave the house on her own. If you would usually have bought her a drink for her birthday (Monday 11th April) please instead consider helping her get an offroad electric wheelchair so she can get outside independently again!

 

Friends of Rita have put up this page on behalf of Rita Mallinson Cookson (AKA Rita Borg) whose life changed cruelly and suddenly just over a year ago. Rita loves life and lived it to the fullest, travelling around Europe and the world, living in nine different countries. She has an irrepressible spirit for adventure and loved caving, swimming and running and was an active member of several different caving and running clubs in London, Wales and Yorkshire. She loved to talk to people (possibly a bit too much!) and was a social butterfly with a lot of friends.

In January 2021 she was sat at her desk working from home when something unexplained happened and she became desperately ill. She was taken to hospital and since then has barely been able to stand or take a step, couldn’t do any work, cook, clean, read a book or even watch TV. Doctors were not able to definitely diagnose what is wrong with her, trying a load of medications and investigations for seemingly every nasty condition under the sun like brain cancer, MND, MS, with no luck so far. She was unable to work and became housebound, as simply walking became too much for her. She has also become allergic to various things to the extent that she cannot spend long in carpeted rooms and so sleeps on her kitchen floor. Believe me, she wishes she had an explanation too!

 

These days she requires full time care, as she is unable to cook a meal, fetch a glass of water, or change her clothes without help. Her favourite days are when somebody takes her out for short trips around Yorkshire, pushing her wheelchair, but she is regularly stuck in bed for days at a time. She’s pretty damn miserable. Doctors are trying some new medication which has improved her a little and she has found she can now function at least enough to slowly carry out some writing projects as and when she can manage them, and do an hour or two of online tutoring per week. As you can imagine, this hasn’t been great for Rita’s finances TO SAY THE LEAST as her benefits barely pay the rent and bills and her income is mostly gone.

 

She would like to be able to regain some of her independence and love of life and with this in mind we are trying to raise money to help buy her an offroad electric wheelchair. This would allow her to move around independently outside her home for the first time in two years, and to get out onto woodland trails and moorland tracks, maybe even underground into a showcave or two! For example Ingleborough cave is wheelchair accessible – but an offroad wheelchair would be needed to get her up the 2 km track to the entrance.

 

“Why this wheelchair? It’s really expensive, my nan got one for 300 quid”

 

She currently has a basic self-propelled NHS wheelchair, but she cannot propel it more than a few metres herself. This means she cannot go out on her own and needs someone strong to push her unless she’s on perfectly paved streets or in a shopping centre. So she needs an electric wheelchair.

 

A basic electric wheelchair would struggle with a lot of normal streets in Yorkshire, including the cobbled roads where Rita lives, and wouldn’t let her get out in nature again, so she needs an offroad model (this also rules out the Motability scheme). A mobility scooter would be completely inappropriate because Rita wouldn’t be able to navigate or operate the steering for long, and it needs to be pushable so a carer or friend can easily take over the operation, so it can’t be a scooter.

 

A non-powered model would be no use at all, so Rita has the quite specific requirement of a powered offroad wheelchair that can be easily operated by a friend. As we have discovered, these are not very common…

 

Unfortunately the particular type of wheelchair that Rita needs is a fairly specialist item and is priced as such. The two contenders are the Trekinetic (£10000+), and the Mountain Trike eTrike (£7500+) which are expensive even before other costs like insurance, maintenance and a wheelchair ramp for her house. She has been able to have a go with one particular model (the Mountain Trike eTrike) through a charity and that’s what she is using in our photos and one very bad quality video.

 

Our aim is to help her buy one of these. She has recently been awarded the disability benefit Personal Independence Payments, and her backdated payments since she claimed the award total £3250. That gets us almost half way. There is a chance we can get her a voucher towards a wheelchair from the NHS, but this isn’t certain and would likely only be a few hundred pounds total. We are applying for charity grants and we’ll update the budget if we manage to secure any. The eTrike is almost never available second hand, but she might be able to get a non-powered model second hand and have it upgraded, potentially bringing the cost down a little, in which case we'll update here.

Obviously we all hope Rita will get better, but any recovery (which is by no means guaranteed) is likely to be very slow and gradual and she will want the support of a wheelchair for a long time regardless.

Budget breakdown

 

Overall target: £8000 (new eTrike £7200, push handle extension £365, higher seat back £100, spoke guards £75, first years insurance £92.50, workshop time to setup £150, door ramp £200, platform fees £120 = £8302.50)

 

PIP backpayments: £3250

 

Donations already received from some kind friends (including for door ramp): £600

 

Hopefully a wheelchair voucher: £200 ?

 

Remaining: £4252.50

 

We will be hunting for a second hand model which could potentially take £1000-2000 off this total, and if we manage this or anything else changes, we will update accordingly.

 

So if you can help, please consider donating. Even the price of a pint would help. So if you would buy her a drink if you saw her please bung it in here instead. We are well aware these are tough times so if you can’t, then please consider sharing this page around. Either way Rita always appreciates messages and attention (she'll respond when she can manage) and visitors in Shipley when she's feeling up to it!

 

Once we’ve reached our target and sorted Rita’s wheels she’s said her first trips will include Ingleborough Showcave, Gordale Scar, and a trip to see her old caving club down in Wales when she feels up to it! Ideas for trips gratefully received.