Slow and steady wins the race

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas and New Year.

I am a very lucky woman indeed, I have been given the tremendous gift of a donation, resulting in me having around 80% of the money for my prosthetic. I am so incredibly thankful and I can't even begin to express my joy/appreciation/excitement for what this means to me.
Combining this with the previous fundraising I'm so very close! I'm £1500 away from achieving my dream and I'm so very excited that it is now within reach! So, I have 3 months to raise this amount as I'm booked in at the clinic for mid-March 2012...
Now the real pressure is on. I'm trying to work out events and fundraisers I can do in this short amount of time and I would really appreciate and ideas that you may have, this is crunch time. I feel confident that we can pull this off, one way or another. So please, don't hesitate to get in touch, I could use all the help I can get with this. You can get in contact with me at: cammylea123@btinternet.com

Slow progress on the website, I'm finally going to get it set up (fingers crossed within a week!), I've been so preoccupied the last few weeks I haven't managed to get it done, but now is the time to get going.

Also, I'm narrowing down the charity I want to raise money for, which is proving to be a very difficult decision as there are so many deserving causes out there but I think I've finally narrowed it down to two. More information to follow.

Here's to a year of love, happiness and reaching our goals, no matter how daunting they may seem.
xxx

Website continued

Starting to make progress with my website. It's now finally ready to start building so hopefully it will be running within the next week or two. At this stage I'm trying to find someone who has experience with Wordpress who can help me build it as I want it to look great, so if anyone knows someone with experience in Web Design and/or Wordpress I'd greatly appreciate it if they could give me an email address or something so I can get in touch.

In terms of fundraising I've got lots of ideas, it's just a case of organising and putting them into action.

The ideal scenario is to raise money not only for me, but more importantly a charity of my choosing that specialises in giving prosthetics to those who cannot afford the more functional ones (as lets be honest, they cost an arm and a leg!) The aim is to raise minimum £5000 for charity, I'm hoping for more but it will be a huge undertaking so it will naturally take a lot of time. If anyone wants to get involved or has any ideas I'd love to hear them :-)

Hope to hear from you, I'd really appreciate your support in this huge challenge x

Website

Hi everyone,

It's been a while but I've been trying desperately to get my website up and running with little success.
I'm hoping to get it up within the next few weeks and then the real hard work will start...

I'm currently trying to come up with Fundraising ideas/ways to donate. If you have any ideas I'd greatly appreciate it!

I'll keep you all posted with the website and fingers crossed we can get it going soon, web design is SO confusing. Hopefully with a little help we can do it :-)

First Fundraiser

Today we had the first Fundraiser in aid of my prosthetic.

What a brilliant school, thank you all for coming together and putting on the Fair.
The raffle was a great success with over 200 tickets sold in 4 hours - I am now a Champion ticket seller!

It wouldn't have been possible without Lee, Anne and Rachel so thank you ever so much for organising it.
A big thank you to those who donated personally, every penny counts and believe me when I say, I truly do appreciate it.

What a wonderful start, now to get my brain into gear and start planning more events...

Initial In-Person Assessment

Hi everyone,

It's been a while since I last posted I know. I'm been keeping myself busy the last couple months, enjoying my Summer holidays and quietly working on the next step in my journey.

After countless emails to the prosthetic company I was ready to go for my first assessment, in person, where I would know by the end of it whether or not I was going to be able to proceed with this particular prosthetic.

So, bright and early Monday morning I arrived at the Clinic, where I was greeted by a very friendly member of the team who gathered information regarding my previous use of prosthetics and what I wanted out of this potential one (predominantly to improve my daily life, the little things such as tying my hair myself, chopping and cutting food, carrying and holding objects, computer shortcuts etc). After the general details were slowly sifted through I was finally shown a demonstration model of the arm. It was explained in great detail, and with much excitement I was handed it to play with. I've never seen anything quite like it, although it had the glove on it, instead of the lifelike glove, the sheer aesthetic is intriguing to say the least. As for the weight, I was pleasantly surprised by how light it was, all things considered...
Much to my disappointment I handed it back and we began the lengthy process of the trying to find my muscle signals that I will need to operate the hand. The back one came with ease, as this is the muscle I used for years to operate my old prosthetics. However, I've never required a second muscle for functionality before. Annoyingly, my back one was so strong that it kept interfering with the front, but after much poking and prodding with signal sensors (many strained facial expressions may I add that were apparently rather amusing) and failing to light up the impulse box, I eventually found the shy muscle and after repeating the action for roughly half an hour I was hooked up to a hand.
It was the most incredible experience! I'm obviously used to operating prosthetics before, but it only had one movement - open and close the hand. This one however, is the bees knees of functionality. I managed to get fairly good at opening and closing, adjusting open and close percentages and at the end of it (even if I do say so myself) I was feeling rather smug and proud of my poor, tired little arm muscles.

After all this excitement and muscle exercise I was given exercises to do by the physical therapist in preparation for the prosthetic (if I do decide to go ahead with it).

It's now up to me to decide if it is worth the investment or should I wait until something else comes along. I'm not going to rush, I'll take my time and I've been talking it over with friends and family.
At this precise moment in time I'm leaning towards yes, and I'm unbelievably excited, however, I mustn't rush this and make it for the wrong reasons. It will be a tough one that's for sure!

Evaluation and Quotations

After a very long two weeks waiting to hear back from the prosthetic company about my patient form I sent them along with numerous photos of my arm from all angles and arm positions they got back to me today.

They informed me of my prosthetic options - 1. a partially functional, more cosmetic arm. 2. nearly fully functional prosthetic I had originally set my sights on.
What's the point of getting a cosmetic arm when the whole point of this exercise is to improve my independence, functionality (and confidence).

The price jump between the two is significant but I am going to push ahead with the more functional prosthetic (£46,500, gulp!). Apparently the hand along weighs 5kg's, that's not even taking into consideration the arm and elbow. Add to this the fact that in order to attach it I will require a cast shoulder on top that reaches over my chest and back! ...I'd better get myself to the gym and start bulking up so I can actually stand and not collapse under the sheer weight of it. As my boyfriend put it, "You're gonna look like Rambo on one side!" how lovely :-P

The next step is to get to grips with all the legal mumbo-jumbo jargon in terms of legal requirements that must be adhered to for fundraising - it's about 32 pages of things I don't understand. This should be interesting. Once I get that, I can begin planning the fundraising.

Application for funding

Today Mat, Krys and myself applied for funding for our documentary. We've submitted a detailed account of what it's about, our goals for the doc and various other bits of information about us and our situation.

Fingers and toes crossed that we manage to get funding as we really need a camera and equipment as filming on a flip cam and smart phones simply won't cut it. We're cutting a teaser trailer to submit with our application in hopes of increasing our chances of success.
If we got it, it would make a huge difference having a camera of our own, we would have much higher quality rushes to work from and access to it 24/7, where as at the moment we don't.
Fingers and toes crossed...