MD Disabled 23 Year Old Man Seeks Grant Money For Wheelchair Van
by Emilio
My father died in February 2002 from alcoholism. Ever since I was little my life has been hard. When I was 14 I started drinking beer and smoking Marijuana after my dad died just to try to kill the pain. My mom has been working since I was in her uterus. I love my mom very much. She has always done her best to keep me happy but I just never was until I met Jesus Christ. Every time I see her I feel like she gets sad to be working most of her life and still no change but you see I believe in always hoping for the best. My disability is muscular dystrophy. It's a disease that affects the muscles in my body by contracting and tightening. My mom said I was born with it but I wasn't diagnosed until I was about five or seven years old. We discovered it after I kept falling. My mom took me to the hospital to do some tests. The kind of test they did was to remove a piece of flesh from my thigh and take it to the lab. It came back positive with muscular dystrophy. It has progressed from falling to not being able to feed myself, to now being on a ventilator and on a wheelchair. I still have plenty of hand strength to be able to use this mouse to write and record my gospel rap songs. I am currently living in a long-term hospital, which has certified nursing assistants, licensed vocational nurses and respiratory therapists to take care of me. The problem is I don't get to go out on trips to visit my family because I can't afford a handicapped van with a lift for my motorized chair. To go out, I also need to buy some expensive medical equipment like a ventilator and a suction machine. The ventilator is hooked up to my neck with a trach tube. It is a small plastic tube that goes in through my airway to my lungs. A suction machine it is to suck out the secretions that build up in my lungs. This is very important for going out on trips. All I really want is to have these medical supplies to live more of an independent life like most people my age. I think many people don't really know the importance of being able to live a normal life with a job, car, and their own apartment or house. Nowadays many people take their lives for granted. They don't know that there are disabled people like me just wishing to have a normal life. For many people, being able to go out on the town with their friends and family is as simple as blinking. To me it's the only thing I long for each and every day. I am attempting to earn money on my own by selling music CDs, food and snacks. I am also starting a website where I want to sell shirts, necklaces, and my own gospel rap music. I currently get Social Security Income and Medi-Cal but they said they don't pay for transportation, ventilator or suction machine. I've been living in hospitals for three years now. In this hospital they don't let me go out because I don't have the right transportation to get me around. I just want to go to the places people go everyday: movies, park, mall, grocery store and so on. I haven't gone out in 3 years. I'm just trying to live the most normal life as I possibly can but I need some help. I can't just give up and not fight. I'm too young. I need to have a normal life just like every other 23-year-old normal person does. I'll just trust that God will help me by pointing me in the right direction. Any help or advice will be much appreciated.
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