Rachel Levy Needs to Zoom!

Hi everyone, I'm Eva Hocking and I’d like to introduce my awe-inspiring partner Rachel Levy. We met in theatre school three years ago and fell madly in love, decided to move in together after three months, and have since built a life together in Victoria BC. Being both educated and hard working, we were lucky enough to have stable income right from graduation. Until a year and a half ago.

Rachel got extremely sick. After months of looking for answers we found a doctor who would help, and the flurry of diagnoses and tests started. Fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, sleep apnea, narcolepsy, chronic pain, painful nerve twitches and spasms, brain fog, confusion and memory loss, debilitating migraines. The list continues to grow. Nothing degenerative, but all of it permanent and lifelong. So, we began the lengthy and costly process of making Rachel’s life an accessible one, building a toolkit of treatments and management systems while trying to keep food on the table.

We need your help. Specifically, Rachel needs a power chair. They haven’t left the house on their own in over a year and cannot live an independent life. I act as their support worker when I can, but when I leave the house, they are stuck on the couch or in bed. We have a manual wheelchair we use when they have the energy to leave the house with me, but they can’t move it on their own and it doesn’t have any of the supportive functions our occupational therapist has prescribed for Rachel. I’ll be going back to school soon in the hopes of getting a job as a physiotherapist that can support us both in the long term, but right now we are struggling to keep up with medical expenses. They have very little energy and can’t manage anything without the help of a wheelchair. We are too young to have anything saved up for the kinds of medical expenses we have been dealing with for the last year, and the cost of the power chair they need is something we just can’t afford if we want to keep a roof over our heads.

So that’s why Rachel needs to zoom! They need to zoom into an accessible life in their power chair. They want to enjoy going on hikes again, waking our dog, seeing friends, going to places on their own, and maybe even the Malahat Skywalk! They want to be able to go to the grocery store, the library, the park, the mall, restaurants and movies, and really anywhere most people want to go. And they deserve the right to mobility.

We got one trial weekend with a power chair over the summer- and it was the best weekend Rachel had had in years. I remember they were crying because it was such an emotional realization to know what basic needs they were missing.

In short, they need the basic right to leave the house unassisted… and for that we need $20,000. I’ve been building a list of accessible hiking trails in the area- please help Rachel get back out there!!

Share this anywhere you can. Thank you all so so much.

#rachellevyneedstozoom