A powered Off Road Wheel attachment for Catherine

Hello! I'm Catherine Lewis and I'm hoping to get some help to buy an electric front wheel attachment for my manual wheelchair.

Those of you who know me know I'm very much an outdoors sort of person and have spent my whole life out and about with my dogs. Unfortunately, recently I've been finding that the deterioration of my arm and hand strength is limiting where I can go in my wheelchair and that is restricting what I can enjoy doing, which is frustrating and damaging my hands further with more pushing just makes the problem worse.

My wonderful off-road Tramper mobility scooter is perfect for a lot of what I do day-to-day, but it is designed for rough forest paths and it isn't suitable for the sort of well maintained grass you find at off-lead dog parks and gardens, plus it is very difficult to transport without a trailer, something I am finding it increasingly difficult to handle on my own.

After a lot of thought, I have decided that the best interim step to see me through until I can achieve my long term goal of getting a hands-free Omeo wheelchair is to get a powered front wheel attachment for my chair so that I can keep up with the girls when we are out and about, and I don't have to struggle when I'm visiting places that I can't transport my Tramper to.

Like all disability related equipment these things aren't cheap, so because everyone was so generous in suggesting a Go Fund Me for an Omeo (currently a completely unobtainable £18,500), I have reluctantly decided to see if I can raise part of the cost this way.

If I am lucky enough to raise more than my goal amount, I will put the money towards my long term Omeo fund, which will give me a lot of hope of staying mobile and active in the future.

The attachment I have chosen is the Empulse F55. I have to have this one because my wheelchair is NHS funded and they have strict rules about what additional equipment can be used with their chairs. It is fully compatible with the frame, has a speed limiter to make sure the user sticks to legal limits, and it has excellent braking. It even has a reverse gear. It's one of the cheapest on the market too, and has excellent all round reviews for reliability.

If you can spare a little to help me towards my goal, thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you can't that is fine too, you can help just as much by sharing this with your friends and colleagues so that as many people see it as possible.

Huge thanks everyone!

Catherine