Help Lauren Get Her Perfect Wheelchair

Hello everyone! As some of you know, my beautiful, lovely, perfect girlfriend Lauren has been in a nonstop battle for a new wheelchair that actually works and fits her for years now.

She currently has a manual wheelchair given to her a year ago by insurance, which she waited 3 years for— after her measurements were lost and the process was reset. It’s terribly built and way too big for her. The cushion is hard and poorly made, which causes her sciatica to flare up. There is no camber (wheel tilt for balance) for LA streets, and due to the size, she cannot push herself in it. She’s been fighting with insurance for months to get it maintenanced. She works, goes to university full time, has a summer internship, and side gigs to make ends meet. She’s absolutely exhausted of trying to make a broken system work and the endless hours of fruitless phone tag.

Due to insurance change, she is now eligible for a new wheelchair despite getting the current one she uses only a year ago. Unfortunately, the wheelchair company isn’t responding to her calls to set up an appointment. She doesn’t want to wait even more years for another potentially badly built wheelchair.

Her foldable power chair she’s had for 4 years is now broken and beyond repair due to airline damage. In the midst of getting that chair replaced (with months of phone tag and failure) she got in contact with U2 mobility in Corona, due to a chance encounter by a friend.

U2 mobility happens to have an extremely nice manual wheelchair that fits Lauren perfectly. It was built a year ago for a man who had ALS, but tragically passed away before he could receive it. When trying it out, Lauren was shocked. She could wheel it easily, after thinking she was too weak to be able to wheel herself.

Lauren was recently diagnosed with Lupus, an autoimmune disease that causes intense joint pain and fatigue. While processing this has affected her deeply, she’s now in a place where she can tackle it better and attempt to improve her symptoms. Exercise is a major treatment for Lupus and her existing Cerebral Palsy— which a correctly fitting manual chair would make so much easier. Lauren has strictly been using her folding electric chair (the one that broke) because it has been cost-effective and more convenient, again, due to the extreme delay of her insurance providing an adequate manual chair. The hard cushion of the foldable chair is also painful, and due to the size of it is difficult to navigate inside.

Getting this wheelchair would change her life and make things so much easier for her. Custom manual wheelchairs without insurance are beyond expensive, retailing around $10,000. However, U2 mobility is offering this wheelchair for $4,700, which is a really good deal.

Lauren is one of the sweetest kindest people I know and deserves to be able to access the world with physical comfort. Please please help her out if you can. Thank you