Help Abby get her freedom back

My name is Tia, I am a support worker for Abbygail, who is super kind natured teenage girl, with a disorder that is stopping her from being who she is and what she wants to do. Her mum wrote below about Abby and their life, they really wish to go back to where they were 4 years ago, take the disorder with them, but not allowing it to compromise every day, as it does right now. As you can see in the photos, she is very active, however, every day is tainted by a seizure or an episode, we don’t know when they will happen, how many and where will she be. From her mum Cassie:

Abbygail is a 16 years old teenager, who lives in the South East Queensland, Gold Coast community. She is a very active girl who loves to help the community, collecting and donations to help those in need, swimming and girl guides, camping, theme parks etc. 4 years ago, at age 12 years old, Abbygail became unwell, becoming unresponsive for long hours, Drs and hospitals didn’t have any answers. Undergoing many tests and scans the Drs and hospitals had no answers. 8 months later we final received a name to Abbygail’s condition; Functional neurologic disorder, known as FND. You ask what is FND?

(FND) is a problem with the functioning of the nervous system and how the brain and body send and receive signals. For more information, please head to the following pages 1. https://www.neurosymptoms.org/en_GB/ 2. http://fndaustralia.com.au

Over the years Abbygail FND symptoms have changed in so many ways and becoming longer and more paralysis taking place, requiring more equipment to help us manage Abbygail’s condition.

Abbygail’s FND symptoms follow

• Unresponsive anywhere from 20mins to 9hrs

• Drop episodes, falling from standing to an unresponsive state

• Seizures (clonic/tonic and absence)

• Fatigue

• low energy

• paralysis

• Can’t feel someone touching her legs or body with paralysis, From waist down, longest so far is 3 months had to relearn to walk, from the neck down so far, the longest is 12hrs, all these can occur at any time and/or could last awhile, with each episode we just don’t know how long the paralysis will last or what one Abbygail will have

Abbygail’s FND has been a big impact where she is no longer able to attend main school was attending Pimpama state secondary college. Abbygail is now doing distance Education from home alongside all her appointments and working with her support team.

Abbygail also loved getting out and about, walking out in the bush, being with friends and family, heading to the theme parks all of these are hard as we can’t transport Abbygail home to recover from her FND episodes. If we do head out, we need help from QLD Ambulance and we all know how busy and wait times are like now.

As we are classed as non-urgent our wait times can become very long this can make extra stress with the public and having to block of areas in the shops or checkouts, walkways

By being about to have access to a wheelchair vehicle will make our life more normal and be able to give Abbygail some more freedom to get out with in the community and do normal teenager things with her support workers and family.

We would also like to get Abbygail an assistance dog to help give her and Support worker some pre warning, currently, we do not get any pre warning at all. Assistance dog would help us with that, where we can try and get Abbygail to a safe place before the episode occurs.

Abbygail’ Goals

1. able to access the community more by having access to Abbygail’s wheelchair, portable hoist in a wheelchair vehicle. This way we can safely transport Abbygail during one of her FND Unresponsive episodes by freeing up the Ambulance services to help these in emergency needs.

2. An Assistance dog to help notice any warning signs and warn Abbygail and others with her. Give Abbygail some more freedom in her life, help calm and come out of her episode faster

How can you help Abbygail?

By donating to help achieve our goals for a

Vehicle $80,000

Assistance dog $30,000

Any help is appreciated and even a couple of dollars can get us to our goal, the goal for my daughter, to be able to experience life again, to be able to do all things teenagers typically do. Thank you very much for all help provided. We really do appreciate it.