Donation protected
Things are changing, fast, and Rachel urgently needs your help.
Rachel is in her late 40s, a loving wife and an amazing mum to our two young sons. Six months ago, she was a fit, healthy and active. She lived her life to the full. She ran regularly, she rode her mountain bike. She went on yoga holidays with her friends and her sister and she loved her work helping others as a reflexologist.
But now, out of the blue, everything has changed. Rachel has been diagnosed Motor Neuron Disease and slowly, unhaltingly, she is sliding into a closed world from which she will not return. Our grief is unbearable. Her grief is even worse. We cannot easily understand her anymore, she needs support for the simple things we all take for granted. She cannot brush or wash her own hair and all movement is increasingly difficult for her. She can no longer work and sooner rather than later, she will need to spend her life on one level without step or rises, so that she can safely move around and stay in her life as much as she can.
A few weeks ago, I heard someone ask her such an innocent question, “what do you do all day?”. Rachel’s simple answer showed just how brave she truly is; “I’m trying to stay alive”. She said it with such passion that I cried. What that person also had no idea about, was how much of her it took just to utter those few words.
We are trying to keep Rachel alive. We simply do not know what the future holds and how quickly this disease will make even the simplest of things impossible for her, but we are doing everything we possibly can. We are seeking treatments, supplements, further tests and alternative medications. Simply put, we are trying anything that might be of even a small help for Rachel.
We are, though, also working hard to make Rachel’s life now as good as it can be. We are looking for ways for her beloved boys to be with her, ways for her to see her many loving friends and her lovely family.
To do this we need to raise a lot of money to build a specialised extension to our home, together with internal changes to allow her to live and to have safe, free movement around the ground floor. The total bill for that is going to be around £50,000.
We are hoping to start work in the next few weeks, so that we can be prepared for when she can no longer use the stairs.
We also hope to change our transport so that we can take Rachel out of the house. We want her to continue to see the people she loves and she has told me that it is her strongest desire that she can have at least one more adventure with her boys before it becomes impossible. Exactly what that will be is yet to be decided. She would love Island hoping in Greece. She was planning for us to take a road trip across America in her 50th year and we had been saving for that. Maybe in the end, it will be a road trip around Britain, we don’t know, because we don’t know what will be possible. But we know that she wants a life. She wants to live. Though her life is now limited, she still wants to have one. And we are doing everything we can think of to make that possible.
And that is where you can help us, and help Rachel live her best possible life.
Please contribute here if you can. Every tiny amount is an amount we don’t have to find some other way to gather together.
Thank you doesn’t seem enough but it is all we have so thank you, for every single pound you can donate to help. You will never know how truly thankful we all are.
Rachel is in her late 40s, a loving wife and an amazing mum to our two young sons. Six months ago, she was a fit, healthy and active. She lived her life to the full. She ran regularly, she rode her mountain bike. She went on yoga holidays with her friends and her sister and she loved her work helping others as a reflexologist.
But now, out of the blue, everything has changed. Rachel has been diagnosed Motor Neuron Disease and slowly, unhaltingly, she is sliding into a closed world from which she will not return. Our grief is unbearable. Her grief is even worse. We cannot easily understand her anymore, she needs support for the simple things we all take for granted. She cannot brush or wash her own hair and all movement is increasingly difficult for her. She can no longer work and sooner rather than later, she will need to spend her life on one level without step or rises, so that she can safely move around and stay in her life as much as she can.
A few weeks ago, I heard someone ask her such an innocent question, “what do you do all day?”. Rachel’s simple answer showed just how brave she truly is; “I’m trying to stay alive”. She said it with such passion that I cried. What that person also had no idea about, was how much of her it took just to utter those few words.
We are trying to keep Rachel alive. We simply do not know what the future holds and how quickly this disease will make even the simplest of things impossible for her, but we are doing everything we possibly can. We are seeking treatments, supplements, further tests and alternative medications. Simply put, we are trying anything that might be of even a small help for Rachel.
We are, though, also working hard to make Rachel’s life now as good as it can be. We are looking for ways for her beloved boys to be with her, ways for her to see her many loving friends and her lovely family.
To do this we need to raise a lot of money to build a specialised extension to our home, together with internal changes to allow her to live and to have safe, free movement around the ground floor. The total bill for that is going to be around £50,000.
We are hoping to start work in the next few weeks, so that we can be prepared for when she can no longer use the stairs.
We also hope to change our transport so that we can take Rachel out of the house. We want her to continue to see the people she loves and she has told me that it is her strongest desire that she can have at least one more adventure with her boys before it becomes impossible. Exactly what that will be is yet to be decided. She would love Island hoping in Greece. She was planning for us to take a road trip across America in her 50th year and we had been saving for that. Maybe in the end, it will be a road trip around Britain, we don’t know, because we don’t know what will be possible. But we know that she wants a life. She wants to live. Though her life is now limited, she still wants to have one. And we are doing everything we can think of to make that possible.
And that is where you can help us, and help Rachel live her best possible life.
Please contribute here if you can. Every tiny amount is an amount we don’t have to find some other way to gather together.
Thank you doesn’t seem enough but it is all we have so thank you, for every single pound you can donate to help. You will never know how truly thankful we all are.
Co-organizers (2)
Steve Cordingley
Organizer
England
Rachel Cordingley
Co-organizer