Haywards Heath Resident Needs Help in Raising Funds for Specialised Wheelchair
Can you imagine having all access to your hobbies and passions taken away from you virtually overnight? Well, this is a reality that became all too real for Haywards Heath resident, Hayley Brown.
By Jamie Di Francescomarino
Hayley is an avid conservationist and former rambler and forager with no means of continuing on this passion and describes herself as “a shell of my former self”. Back in 2018 Hayley got very sick and didn’t get better. At the age of 30, one morning, Hayley couldn’t walk which spiralled her existing conditions such as polycystic ovarian syndrome. She has been diagnosed with multiple chronic conditions including severe Fibromyalgia, Erythromelalgia, Vestibular Migraine, Restless Legs Syndrome and Sleep Apnoea which, as you can imagine, all contribute to her mental health issues such as recurring clinical depression and anxiety.
Hayley said, “Each of these conditions has its own set of symptoms ranging from severe pain every single day that feels like burning acid running down my spine with no relief to vertigo and memory loss. It feels as if at some point my body stopped working properly and everything fell out of sync.”
Hayley is desperate to get back into her outdoor passions, but as mentioned earlier, doesn’t have the means. However, Hayley is now crowdfunding for a specialised wheelchair made for mixed terrains. It is a Mountain E-trike and will cost her just shy of £8,000.
Since we have put this article out in several editions of our magazine we have had a great response from the general public. Hayley has received donations from residents in the Haywards Heath area that we know about and has hopefully had some to her GoFundMe page (link below).
There was also a Crawley Down resident who has offered to donate half of his donations from a marathon he is completing this September to Hayley and her cause, which is very generous and great news!
If you can spare even a couple of pounds to help Hayley, you will be helping a woman who has a hole in her life that needs re-filling, and you would be changing someone’s life.