Wheelchair Accessible Van and Smart Drive
Donation protected
I'm raising money for a used, but in good condition, wheelchair accessible van and a Smart Drive to propel my wheelchair.
My story began in 2002 when I was in a bad car accident. I was at a complete stop and was rear-ended by a vehicle traveling at 50-55mph. The woman who hit me was talking on the phone and was distracted driving. The trunk of my vehicle was at the back of my seat. My seat broke on impact, so I was flopping around. The paramedics and fire department had to cut me out of my car. I tore muscles from the base of my skull down to my tailbone and took much of the impact to my low back and hips. I also had intense whiplash. For the next 4 years, I had consistent symptoms in my left leg and back. I used a cane and crutches throughout that time.
In 2006, after nearly 6 months on crutches, an orthopedic surgeon ordered additional x-ray’s, nerve conduction studies and an MRI because my symptoms were continuing to worsen. It was after the MRI that I was diagnosed with avascular necrosis (bone death) of the femoral head (ball of the hip) in my left hip. The only resolution was to have my hip completely replaced. In February of 2007, I had the answer to my prayers and end to my suffering total hip replacement. The surgery went well, and I was released from the hospital much quicker than expected. By my six-week post-operative follow up, I knew something was wrong. My pain was increasing. My hip was popping, and I had a new pain mid-thigh. I told my surgeon, he said that we needed to wait until I was 18 months post-op and completely healed. I never imagined those 18 months would be when my 9 years of absolute hell would begin. See, I’ve known for most of my life that I have a metal allergy. I can’t wear metal backed watches, cheap jewelry or allow moisture to accumulate under quality jewelry. I told my surgeon this, but he blew me off saying that my allergy was on the outside of my body and the inside of the body wouldn’t have the same reaction. My mistake was believing him. During the wait, my hip began subluxing or dislocating with little movement of my body. My hip dislocated in and out of the socket multiple times a day. We determined that my replacement had failed in 2008, leading to my second total hip replacement later that year.
I never imagined going in for surgery number two that I would have to worry about surviving it. Due to my concern about allergy and my surgeon’s concern about why the replacement failed, he decided to confer with a colleague while I was in surgery. I was told the colleague would be available during my surgery time so they could converse and decide what to do based on what was found once I was open on the table. This didn’t end up being reality. The colleague was not available, so my surgeon left me open on the table while he waited for this colleague to get back to him. I was open for hours and was bleeding. My surgeon ended up doing another total hip replacement and closing me up. When I got back to my room, my Mom knew something was wrong. I was gray and lethargic. Over the next 12 hours, my blood pressure continued to drop lower and lower until I was in grave danger of passing away. I was in so much pain and felt so sick, I remember saying 5 words a parent never wants to hear. “Please just let me die”. If any of you know my Mother, you know her response was “absolutely not, we aren’t going there”! She would also tell you that she was more composed than the nurses at that point. They FINALLY did blood work and found out that I was running on fumes with the amount of blood left in my body. After multiple blood transfusions, my blood pressure started coming back up. It was a close call for sure. The trauma continued because I knew instantly, post-operatively that the second surgery was not successful either. My recovery wasn’t even a recovery. I was in as bad of shape after the surgery as I was before the second surgery. The dislocating became a constant issue. I would dislocate my hip by standing up, sitting down, twisting in my chair or doing nothing at all.
After surgery in 2008, I used a walker, then crutches. In early 2009, while at work, I got up from my desk and took 1 step from my chair. I had the worst popping subluxation pain of my life. My whole body jerked. I assumed the subluxation that I’d been dealing with for over two years was taking place as usual. I was wrong. This time, my hip didn’t pop out and then slide back in. I completely dislocated my hip and it wasn’t going back into the socket. Realizing this was different was not my only experience. I was now drawing the attention of my entire department because, I didn’t realize it right away, I was screaming. Of course, my beautiful coworkers got a rescue squad headed my way right away. When the paramedics arrived, they gave me morphine quickly so they could move me to the stretcher. The morphine was as if they gave me a sip of water. It didn’t do anything to help with the pain. My leg was obviously deformed and not the same length as my right leg. The pain was the worst I’ve had in my life. Just thinking about that day makes my skin crawl and I get goose bumps. The paramedics rushed me to the hospital where I’d had my surgeries so that my surgeon would be close by. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your view of the circumstances, the rescue squad hit a big bump during transport, and we believe that is when my hip popped partially back into the socket. The Emergency Room doctor consulted surgeon number 1, who was fine to release me home after my hip was completely back in the socket. I wasn’t the only one traumatized that day. My coworkers were traumatized and were fearful of my return to work because they didn’t want to have a repeat experience. I was physically and emotionally exhausted and beyond frustrated. I decided I was done with this surgeon and I needed to find somebody to listen to me and help me!
By mid-2009, I was in a wheelchair and in search of a new surgeon. After finding a new surgeon and going through a battery of tests, he decided total hip replacement number three needed to be done with different parts and a different manufacturer. He still wasn’t convinced my allergy was the problem. He considered himself to be the fixer of other surgeon’s mistakes. He all but guaranteed me he was going to fix me up with this surgery. He was wrong. Nothing was different other than I had my 3rd set of prosthetics. Even with these new parts, the subluxation and chronic pain continued. This surgeon did fluoroscopy so that he could watch the subluxation live. He decided that we would do surgery number 4 with some knew plans.
My 4th total hip replacement took place in early 2010, just a few short months after surgery 3. In this surgery, #4, he built a custom prosthetic from different manufacturers. He screwed the socket into my pelvis with 3 surgical screws, placed a plastic liner so the metal parts didn’t touch and placed a locking ring to keep the prosthetic from subluxing. I thought with all these ideas, the answers were found, and I was finally going to be able to get back to my living life. I was so sure that each of these surgeries was going to be the one, that I continued working on my master’s degrees so I could further my career when I was healthy again. I graduated with 3 master’s degrees by surgery number 4. Boy was I wrong, again.
After surgery number 4, my hip didn’t dislocate as much. It did find a way to dislocate on the one side that the ring didn’t lock the joint completely. My pain was horrible, I couldn’t sleep, and the pain was just getting worse. In each surgery, they drilled out more and more of my femur to place the rod. After surgery number 4, the rod ended about 3 inches above my knee. The arthritis got worse each time I had surgery. Living in Wisconsin, the cold winters and the year-round dampness only added to my suffering. After this prosthetic failure, surgeon number 2 threw his hands up and had no idea what to do next. I was left to figure out how to survive with the pain.
I did research and found a doctor in Chicago that was researching metal allergies in joint replacements. In order to see him, I had to pay for some bloodwork not covered by insurance. The blood test was $500 and had to be drawn a special way and processed in a certain laboratory. Only after the bloodwork was done would his office schedule an appointment. I went to see him, in 2010, after months of waiting approval. His bloodwork only tested for metal shavings and metal toxicity. My bloodwork came back elevated but not in the range that fit his very specific criteria for research and treatment. I left his office devastated that again another doctor couldn’t help me. I believed at this point that this was going to be my life…high dose pain medication, no sleep and struggling to get through each day at work so I could afford medical insurance and pay for the medications. I was depressed and felt like I was losing my mind.
My family doctor took over 100% of my care. I pulled together every ounce of strength I had to go to work and go home. When I wasn’t at work, I was in bed with heat or ice on my hip and leg. I couldn’t tolerate sitting in the same spot for more than a few minutes at a time. I had to keep adjusting my body and eventually laying down became the best option of the lack of options. My family doctor kept sending me to pain management doctors in search of something to help. I had injections in my spine, my hip and hip socket. Nothing helped and often the steroidal injections increased the swelling which in turn worsened my pain. I was losing my battle to continue working. My productivity was falling apart and was so far below my expectations for myself and those of my employer (even though they were as lenient as possible). In 2011, I was forced to leave my job because of the constant, debilitating pain, inability to sleep and being unable to concentrate as a side effect to high doses of pain and antispasmodic medications. I spent the rest of 2011 in bed and trying to figure out how to get on Social Security Disability benefits. After all, I couldn’t work but had to have medical insurance to pay for the medical bills and medications. Those needs didn’t include survival in the rest of my life…food, housing, and a vehicle to get me to and from doctors visits an hour each way at least twice a month.
In 2012, under the care of another pain management doctor, I had a spinal stimulator placed in my spine to reduce my pain level. The thought was the electrical stimulation would block the messages of pain from getting to my brain. The leads were placed around my spinal cord and the controller was placed in a created pocket under the skin above my right hip. Unfortunately, the stimulator consistently shocked me and had to be removed in 2013. l felt like my life was over and that I was destined to die in my bed suffering in extreme pain. The only option left that the pain management doctors had to offer was an implanted morphine pump. Doing this would not have provided me with a long life. Morphine and prolonged narcotic pain medications are very destructive to your liver. I was 38, disabled and stuck in bed. I didn’t want to guarantee liver damage so young. I had also become unable to keep up my home physically or financially. In late 2014, I quit fighting staying in my home and moved to Texas with my parents. My family would be able to help me with anything and everything I couldn’t do for myself anymore.
After about 6 months of living with my family in Texas, I decided to give a Texas orthopedic surgeon a visit. The first surgeon I visited said that I was way to complex of a case for him, so he referred me to the regional surgeon that did all the crazy cases. I thought, hear we go again, but I tried to stay open minded. Initially, this surgeon (#4), didn’t give me any confidence. He was short with me and didn’t believe my story or that I believed all these problems after the first surgery stemmed from my metal allergy. He finally agreed to order allergy testing, checking all the substances used in my replacement surgeries…even though I believe he did it to prove me wrong. The results of the allergy testing proved me right. My skin reacted to the spot they put the nickel so quickly, I had welts before I got home from the placement. I had to go to the allergist every day for a week for them to document my reactions. The allergist thought we were going to have to stop the study to deal with my severe reaction to nickel. It took many months for my skin to completely heal and the scarring from the nickel reaction to go away. FINALLY, I was heard and possibly had a chance at change. My orthopedic surgeon said he had never seen a reaction like mine. He changed his attitude completely and was and is so very kind and compassionate with me to this day. He researched every prosthetic hip on the market in the World. Every single manufacturer has nickel in their products, no matter the type or design. I learned at my second visit with him that only 1 thing could possibly help me. We had to remove all the prosthetic parts down to the screws in my pelvis. This surgery had many risks because of the 4 previous surgeries, how much of my femur was drilled out and how weak my pelvis could be from removing the screws and the filing down they had done to get all the different sockets placed. So, in 2015, the entire prosthetic was removed. In order to get all the parts out, he had to cut my femur in half lengthwise and hammer/chisel out the rod. The changes I noticed after surgery were unbelievable. My pain was different, and the recovery was going to be long with my incision reaching about 2 feet in length. It was a very long and tough recovery including nearly 4 months of physical therapy. I recovered well, but there was still something wrong. My femur kept getting stuck in my pelvis, then popping out or needing to be pulled out and causing horrible nerve pain. I suffered this way for as long as I could. When I could take it no more, I reached out to my surgeon for help.
In 2017, after nearly 2 years of my femur getting caught in my pelvis, I had surgery number 6. This was a rough surgery, where my orthopedic surgeon removed a couple centimeters of my femur and detached all the muscles except the main quadricep from my pelvis. After the surgery and healing time, in early 2018, I was doing the best I’ve been in 15 years. By April of 2019, things started going downhill again.
For my 10 years in a wheelchair, I have driven the same car and lifted my wheelchair over my lap to place it into the front seat. I have fought to keep my independence. Unfortunately, those years have been hard on my body. My health has changed. I have partial tears in both shoulders and this year I was told I have several disks in my low back that are dehydrated and bulging. I'm unable to continue the same method of transporting myself. I am now relying on friends and family to take me places and lift my wheelchair in and out of their vehicles. At 45, I'm the youngster of the group and they all have their own situations. I have lost my independence. I can’t get out to do pool therapy or physical therapy. I need this accessible van and Smart Drive so I can take back my independence and get back to living the best life I can. This best life includes doctor's appointments, pool therapy, groceries and time outside of the house. Any help you can offer is so greatly appreciated. Thank you so much in advance!
My story began in 2002 when I was in a bad car accident. I was at a complete stop and was rear-ended by a vehicle traveling at 50-55mph. The woman who hit me was talking on the phone and was distracted driving. The trunk of my vehicle was at the back of my seat. My seat broke on impact, so I was flopping around. The paramedics and fire department had to cut me out of my car. I tore muscles from the base of my skull down to my tailbone and took much of the impact to my low back and hips. I also had intense whiplash. For the next 4 years, I had consistent symptoms in my left leg and back. I used a cane and crutches throughout that time.
In 2006, after nearly 6 months on crutches, an orthopedic surgeon ordered additional x-ray’s, nerve conduction studies and an MRI because my symptoms were continuing to worsen. It was after the MRI that I was diagnosed with avascular necrosis (bone death) of the femoral head (ball of the hip) in my left hip. The only resolution was to have my hip completely replaced. In February of 2007, I had the answer to my prayers and end to my suffering total hip replacement. The surgery went well, and I was released from the hospital much quicker than expected. By my six-week post-operative follow up, I knew something was wrong. My pain was increasing. My hip was popping, and I had a new pain mid-thigh. I told my surgeon, he said that we needed to wait until I was 18 months post-op and completely healed. I never imagined those 18 months would be when my 9 years of absolute hell would begin. See, I’ve known for most of my life that I have a metal allergy. I can’t wear metal backed watches, cheap jewelry or allow moisture to accumulate under quality jewelry. I told my surgeon this, but he blew me off saying that my allergy was on the outside of my body and the inside of the body wouldn’t have the same reaction. My mistake was believing him. During the wait, my hip began subluxing or dislocating with little movement of my body. My hip dislocated in and out of the socket multiple times a day. We determined that my replacement had failed in 2008, leading to my second total hip replacement later that year.
I never imagined going in for surgery number two that I would have to worry about surviving it. Due to my concern about allergy and my surgeon’s concern about why the replacement failed, he decided to confer with a colleague while I was in surgery. I was told the colleague would be available during my surgery time so they could converse and decide what to do based on what was found once I was open on the table. This didn’t end up being reality. The colleague was not available, so my surgeon left me open on the table while he waited for this colleague to get back to him. I was open for hours and was bleeding. My surgeon ended up doing another total hip replacement and closing me up. When I got back to my room, my Mom knew something was wrong. I was gray and lethargic. Over the next 12 hours, my blood pressure continued to drop lower and lower until I was in grave danger of passing away. I was in so much pain and felt so sick, I remember saying 5 words a parent never wants to hear. “Please just let me die”. If any of you know my Mother, you know her response was “absolutely not, we aren’t going there”! She would also tell you that she was more composed than the nurses at that point. They FINALLY did blood work and found out that I was running on fumes with the amount of blood left in my body. After multiple blood transfusions, my blood pressure started coming back up. It was a close call for sure. The trauma continued because I knew instantly, post-operatively that the second surgery was not successful either. My recovery wasn’t even a recovery. I was in as bad of shape after the surgery as I was before the second surgery. The dislocating became a constant issue. I would dislocate my hip by standing up, sitting down, twisting in my chair or doing nothing at all.
After surgery in 2008, I used a walker, then crutches. In early 2009, while at work, I got up from my desk and took 1 step from my chair. I had the worst popping subluxation pain of my life. My whole body jerked. I assumed the subluxation that I’d been dealing with for over two years was taking place as usual. I was wrong. This time, my hip didn’t pop out and then slide back in. I completely dislocated my hip and it wasn’t going back into the socket. Realizing this was different was not my only experience. I was now drawing the attention of my entire department because, I didn’t realize it right away, I was screaming. Of course, my beautiful coworkers got a rescue squad headed my way right away. When the paramedics arrived, they gave me morphine quickly so they could move me to the stretcher. The morphine was as if they gave me a sip of water. It didn’t do anything to help with the pain. My leg was obviously deformed and not the same length as my right leg. The pain was the worst I’ve had in my life. Just thinking about that day makes my skin crawl and I get goose bumps. The paramedics rushed me to the hospital where I’d had my surgeries so that my surgeon would be close by. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your view of the circumstances, the rescue squad hit a big bump during transport, and we believe that is when my hip popped partially back into the socket. The Emergency Room doctor consulted surgeon number 1, who was fine to release me home after my hip was completely back in the socket. I wasn’t the only one traumatized that day. My coworkers were traumatized and were fearful of my return to work because they didn’t want to have a repeat experience. I was physically and emotionally exhausted and beyond frustrated. I decided I was done with this surgeon and I needed to find somebody to listen to me and help me!
By mid-2009, I was in a wheelchair and in search of a new surgeon. After finding a new surgeon and going through a battery of tests, he decided total hip replacement number three needed to be done with different parts and a different manufacturer. He still wasn’t convinced my allergy was the problem. He considered himself to be the fixer of other surgeon’s mistakes. He all but guaranteed me he was going to fix me up with this surgery. He was wrong. Nothing was different other than I had my 3rd set of prosthetics. Even with these new parts, the subluxation and chronic pain continued. This surgeon did fluoroscopy so that he could watch the subluxation live. He decided that we would do surgery number 4 with some knew plans.
My 4th total hip replacement took place in early 2010, just a few short months after surgery 3. In this surgery, #4, he built a custom prosthetic from different manufacturers. He screwed the socket into my pelvis with 3 surgical screws, placed a plastic liner so the metal parts didn’t touch and placed a locking ring to keep the prosthetic from subluxing. I thought with all these ideas, the answers were found, and I was finally going to be able to get back to my living life. I was so sure that each of these surgeries was going to be the one, that I continued working on my master’s degrees so I could further my career when I was healthy again. I graduated with 3 master’s degrees by surgery number 4. Boy was I wrong, again.
After surgery number 4, my hip didn’t dislocate as much. It did find a way to dislocate on the one side that the ring didn’t lock the joint completely. My pain was horrible, I couldn’t sleep, and the pain was just getting worse. In each surgery, they drilled out more and more of my femur to place the rod. After surgery number 4, the rod ended about 3 inches above my knee. The arthritis got worse each time I had surgery. Living in Wisconsin, the cold winters and the year-round dampness only added to my suffering. After this prosthetic failure, surgeon number 2 threw his hands up and had no idea what to do next. I was left to figure out how to survive with the pain.
I did research and found a doctor in Chicago that was researching metal allergies in joint replacements. In order to see him, I had to pay for some bloodwork not covered by insurance. The blood test was $500 and had to be drawn a special way and processed in a certain laboratory. Only after the bloodwork was done would his office schedule an appointment. I went to see him, in 2010, after months of waiting approval. His bloodwork only tested for metal shavings and metal toxicity. My bloodwork came back elevated but not in the range that fit his very specific criteria for research and treatment. I left his office devastated that again another doctor couldn’t help me. I believed at this point that this was going to be my life…high dose pain medication, no sleep and struggling to get through each day at work so I could afford medical insurance and pay for the medications. I was depressed and felt like I was losing my mind.
My family doctor took over 100% of my care. I pulled together every ounce of strength I had to go to work and go home. When I wasn’t at work, I was in bed with heat or ice on my hip and leg. I couldn’t tolerate sitting in the same spot for more than a few minutes at a time. I had to keep adjusting my body and eventually laying down became the best option of the lack of options. My family doctor kept sending me to pain management doctors in search of something to help. I had injections in my spine, my hip and hip socket. Nothing helped and often the steroidal injections increased the swelling which in turn worsened my pain. I was losing my battle to continue working. My productivity was falling apart and was so far below my expectations for myself and those of my employer (even though they were as lenient as possible). In 2011, I was forced to leave my job because of the constant, debilitating pain, inability to sleep and being unable to concentrate as a side effect to high doses of pain and antispasmodic medications. I spent the rest of 2011 in bed and trying to figure out how to get on Social Security Disability benefits. After all, I couldn’t work but had to have medical insurance to pay for the medical bills and medications. Those needs didn’t include survival in the rest of my life…food, housing, and a vehicle to get me to and from doctors visits an hour each way at least twice a month.
In 2012, under the care of another pain management doctor, I had a spinal stimulator placed in my spine to reduce my pain level. The thought was the electrical stimulation would block the messages of pain from getting to my brain. The leads were placed around my spinal cord and the controller was placed in a created pocket under the skin above my right hip. Unfortunately, the stimulator consistently shocked me and had to be removed in 2013. l felt like my life was over and that I was destined to die in my bed suffering in extreme pain. The only option left that the pain management doctors had to offer was an implanted morphine pump. Doing this would not have provided me with a long life. Morphine and prolonged narcotic pain medications are very destructive to your liver. I was 38, disabled and stuck in bed. I didn’t want to guarantee liver damage so young. I had also become unable to keep up my home physically or financially. In late 2014, I quit fighting staying in my home and moved to Texas with my parents. My family would be able to help me with anything and everything I couldn’t do for myself anymore.
After about 6 months of living with my family in Texas, I decided to give a Texas orthopedic surgeon a visit. The first surgeon I visited said that I was way to complex of a case for him, so he referred me to the regional surgeon that did all the crazy cases. I thought, hear we go again, but I tried to stay open minded. Initially, this surgeon (#4), didn’t give me any confidence. He was short with me and didn’t believe my story or that I believed all these problems after the first surgery stemmed from my metal allergy. He finally agreed to order allergy testing, checking all the substances used in my replacement surgeries…even though I believe he did it to prove me wrong. The results of the allergy testing proved me right. My skin reacted to the spot they put the nickel so quickly, I had welts before I got home from the placement. I had to go to the allergist every day for a week for them to document my reactions. The allergist thought we were going to have to stop the study to deal with my severe reaction to nickel. It took many months for my skin to completely heal and the scarring from the nickel reaction to go away. FINALLY, I was heard and possibly had a chance at change. My orthopedic surgeon said he had never seen a reaction like mine. He changed his attitude completely and was and is so very kind and compassionate with me to this day. He researched every prosthetic hip on the market in the World. Every single manufacturer has nickel in their products, no matter the type or design. I learned at my second visit with him that only 1 thing could possibly help me. We had to remove all the prosthetic parts down to the screws in my pelvis. This surgery had many risks because of the 4 previous surgeries, how much of my femur was drilled out and how weak my pelvis could be from removing the screws and the filing down they had done to get all the different sockets placed. So, in 2015, the entire prosthetic was removed. In order to get all the parts out, he had to cut my femur in half lengthwise and hammer/chisel out the rod. The changes I noticed after surgery were unbelievable. My pain was different, and the recovery was going to be long with my incision reaching about 2 feet in length. It was a very long and tough recovery including nearly 4 months of physical therapy. I recovered well, but there was still something wrong. My femur kept getting stuck in my pelvis, then popping out or needing to be pulled out and causing horrible nerve pain. I suffered this way for as long as I could. When I could take it no more, I reached out to my surgeon for help.
In 2017, after nearly 2 years of my femur getting caught in my pelvis, I had surgery number 6. This was a rough surgery, where my orthopedic surgeon removed a couple centimeters of my femur and detached all the muscles except the main quadricep from my pelvis. After the surgery and healing time, in early 2018, I was doing the best I’ve been in 15 years. By April of 2019, things started going downhill again.
For my 10 years in a wheelchair, I have driven the same car and lifted my wheelchair over my lap to place it into the front seat. I have fought to keep my independence. Unfortunately, those years have been hard on my body. My health has changed. I have partial tears in both shoulders and this year I was told I have several disks in my low back that are dehydrated and bulging. I'm unable to continue the same method of transporting myself. I am now relying on friends and family to take me places and lift my wheelchair in and out of their vehicles. At 45, I'm the youngster of the group and they all have their own situations. I have lost my independence. I can’t get out to do pool therapy or physical therapy. I need this accessible van and Smart Drive so I can take back my independence and get back to living the best life I can. This best life includes doctor's appointments, pool therapy, groceries and time outside of the house. Any help you can offer is so greatly appreciated. Thank you so much in advance!
Organizer
Brenda Hammond
Organizer
Fayetteville, TX