Mike

Menace

, Colorado

, United States

Posted on
2020-02-20 3:27:14
“I am a full-time caregiver for a muscular dystrophy patient with, as you can probably imagine, extreme mobility issues. In fact, his ability to move any parts of his body aside from his hands and head are all but nonexistent. His name is Clay and this has been the case for him starting around the age of 12. He is now 36. Due to being able to move his hands and any other mobility being severely restricted, he is a huge video game fan. They allow him to live out parts of life he otherwise wouldn’t be able to occasionally, but most importantly it pulls him out of his own head and allows him to have a little fun and forget about his medical issues for at least small portions of time. About 7 months ago, we came across an FPV sim that happened to be on sale and we decided that it looked like a fun thing to play together, having no idea that it would start us down the road it did. It was fun from the jump. Difficult, but fun. We were having a great time learning to fly the quads and this started us down the path of learning everything we could about them and building our own. We still had no idea at this time the impact this would have on his life. The simulator was a blast and I could see him having fun that I hadn’t seen in a while but the first time he armed one we built ourselves and took off over that empty field it was something else entirely. For the first time since middle school, he was no longer restricted to that same damn chair he has been for most his life. He gets to experience a sense of independence and freedom even if only for a couple minutes at a time. This hobby has brought so much more to both of our lives than just a new hobby and the knowledge required to build and fly an FPV drone. Me and Clay are in the process of starting our own business centered around this technology which has given him a much larger purpose in life and the ability to do something and provide for himself. As the proposal is currently written, all of this in jeopardy. Clay is on a fixed income and we are already relying very much on the kindness of the community around us to help keep him in the air. Until he can find a way to bring in extra income, which is where the business comes in, he is severely restricted on how much extra money he has outside of necessities. However, even the business is in jeopardy because the start up costs will sky rocket in order to be compliant and we dont have the luxury of disposable income. The long and the short of it is, this hobby has opened up a whole portion of life Clay thought he would never get to experience including getting to earn his own living. As the proposal is currently written it severely restricts the possibility that Clay will get to realize any of this. For me, this proposal stands to ruin one of the most important things to me. Not money, or my opportunities, not my own fun and joy but that of my patient.”