Trans-Portation for A & K!

It was the middle of the night in early 2018 when we had our worst emergency, yet.

Two years since K had been diagnosed with epilepsy and we were still struggling to find the right medication balance to control his seizures. We both thought we lived close enough to a hospital, within sight of one, in fact, that an emergency would be quick to get resolved if and when one comes up. This night, however, came after a long week of seizure cycles, when K couldn’t fully recover from a seizure state for longer than a few hours at a time. The medications weren’t working and soon, the exhaustion and physical stress triggered a major seizure that left him barely awake and incoherent.

By the time the ambulance arrived and the EMTs were able to reach our apartment, it had been over half an hour and K had fallen completely unconscious. Ten more minutes were spent waiting with the ambulance beside the road and I couldn’t tell you why they didn’t come to me for K’s information (they were rushed? queerphobic? sticklers? didn’t hear me say "I’m the spouse?", who knows), because I was refused entry into the back with him and told to find my own way to the hospital across the river at 3am. I had summoned a rideshare and it still took off with me leading the ambulance. Five more minutes of negotiating with hospital staff before I could find where K had been brought to and I was finally in a room with him.

I was there just in time to watch K’s heart stop for an entire minute.

Thankfully that minute was while hospital staff was crowded around him and he was recovered safely, but for that long minute of staring at the uncanny pallor of my spouse’s face, I couldn’t help but regret one thing: that we didn’t get here faster. The ambulance trip was over 40 minutes from call to arrival. My Uber took over 10 minutes to find me. All while I could literally see the hospital lights gleaming past the tree line.

This wasn’t the last time we had an emergency where we needed to reach the hospital, but it was the worst (knock on wood), and it’s something that has been on our minds ever since. The last four years have only added to the reasons being without our own transportation has been causing us undue trouble, so it felt like time to finally say…

Hey there! We’re hoping you can help us buy a car and pay for a year of K’s gender-affirming medical care!

You might already know us — we’re Stiffler and K, from the comics, ChaosLife and FindChaos, while we do a few other things and chat a bit on social media. We’re reaching out to ask for help in fulfilling a couple of very important goals: To get a car of our own and fund a year’s worth of K’s gender-affirming medical care. The end result of those goals: a stronger, happier, healthier version of us and loads of more content from it! Hear me out…

The Why - A Car Equals Freedom to:

If you follow us, you might already know that I recently got my driver’s license because many things have changed in our city and lives in the last few years. About a decade ago, it was realistic to get around as an able-bodied couple with no car/license and still make ends meet, but between the neighborhood businesses’ dynamic shift, shortened grocery store hours from the pandemic, new health and mobility concerns for us, and an increasingly strained, yet underdeveloped public transportation system in Columbus, we’ve found our lives becoming increasingly expensive and untenable in terms of getting our basic necessities met like groceries or making doctor’s appointments at times and places we can realistically reach. Add that to the fact that without independent transportation, we’ve essentially been stuck within a small radius of town for years now, and it’s… it’s time.

Back in 2016, K was diagnosed with a seizure disorder that includes complications with POTS and vertigo, and having a larger seizure-detecting Service Dog became a necessity for his mobility and overall well-being. However, even with ADA laws in place, it’s been difficult to access public transportation with a Service Dog and K often faces unfair and unsafe discrimination. You only need to reference the recent successful lawsuit over Uber drivers illegally declining disabled passengers with Service Dogs to see that this isn’t an isolated problem, and it’s one we’ve been fighting for years. Nevermind the fact that the easiest way to skip the "I have to explain service dogs and disability law to a person who is in a hurry and might not care if I make my appointment with their car" is to pay a huge premium for "pet-friendly" rides, and you might start seeing the frustration we’re coming from.

On top of those concerns, we need to move to a more accessible home as soon as we can, which based on the safety of what we can afford will be outside of the immediate city, but further from our current doctors, and you might see how getting a vehicle has become extremely important to us even before considering the positive impacts it would have on our content, careers, and overall happiness.

But that’s enough of the bad-news why! Let’s explain some of the good things K and I will be doing with this GoFundMe: First of all, we’ll get a car.

Not a nice car, because that’s just unrealistic. A real beater of a car, something with 150k+ miles and no Bluetooth. The sort of car that you’d expect painted up and getting wrecked at a derby. We’re not looking for anything fancy or flashy, just something with four doors, A/C (health necessity), and the ability to take us where we need to go for ~2-5 years. After vetting the used cars around where we live for the past few months, it’s feasible to plan on spending around $5,500+ for something like that.

And secondly, for about $1,600, we can cover K’s trans-related healthcare for a year without having to take on so many extra projects — that would be his hormone shots, lab work, screenings, and in-person appointments for 12 months! I can’t tell you how much undue anxiety and guilt are added to his stress around transitioning just because of the cost alone, and that’s simply not fair to him when it’s technically less than a grocery bill. No one’s well-being and personhood should be tied to their ability to afford it, especially in these discouraging times for those who are just trying to live as themselves.

That’s a bit about us, here’s how it benefits you:

Our goals might seem mundane and basic, but that’s just the thing: it takes such simple things like having an old car or an extra $100 of medical care per month to completely change both of our lives and our careers with it. Not only would his continued transition help K with incredibly important things like, y’know, living and happiness, but it improves his overall health in terms of blood pressure, energy, and stress, and having a car will unlock our ability to do… pretty much everything!

We haven’t talked about it often, but we’ve had to pass on several chances to tour and/or visit places for our careers because of transportation limitations, even before disabilities were a factor in our planning. Compound that with the fact that living in a car-centric city like Columbus means we’re largely isolated to about 4 square miles of "easy" access and you can imagine our adventures have been a bit cramped in the last few years. As content creators, that has not been ideal!

We want to share so much with you all and we’re so close to so many amazing sights and experiences we can’t quite reach with rideshares or buses that it’s been frustrating. We’re both wanderers at heart and we’ve not had a single unchaperoned wandering outside of our immediate living area outside of a pricey rental, let alone something that we would love to document and share with you all and that has got to change.

If this goal is funded, you won’t hear the end of us, in a good way. Beyond freeing up our daily schedules to make more content and connect with you all more, we’ve got so many ideas for places to visit the moment we have a car of our own! We want to expand and share our growing world with you in so many ways, including through social media, videos, and comics to bring you all along for the ride with us!

For example, what’s it like traveling the back roads as a queer, trans couple? How amazing is that one creamery outside of Springfield? If we visit the ghost town up north, will we become subjects of a horror movie? Can you truly get me out of New Orleans once K shows me around? There are so many possibilities with two dykes and one car!

We just don’t know, but as people with freelance schedules, a basic car, and a wifi connection: the possibilities are endless! We can also plan for very specific trips like seeing you all at conventions, giving more lectures, volunteering at events, and generally being real people that exist in the world, once we can actually get there!

I hope you’ll consider contributing to our GoFundMe and help us reach our healthcare and accessibility goals! We’re so excited to grow and see more of the world with you all. Let’s start an adventure together!

Quick Questions:

"Why not just lease a new car?"

This will be our first car and we plan to use it for errands, transporting a large service dog, frequent day-trips and occasional long-distance travel, so mileage and wear-and-tear will quickly become a factor that’s unappealing to dealers. Plus, we still need to move soon, which requires all of the good credit and the fewest monthly bills we can manage to scrape together after chronic medical issues.

"Are you considering alternatives to a car? Or alternative cars?"

Believe me, we’ve exhausted this city’s options for non-car owners, up to and including car shares, and it’s just not working. As far as alternative cars, we’re incredibly open to possibilities. Our only requirements are that it runs well, has four doors with a decent back seat, A/C (sorry, a must for health reasons) and that it isn’t a gas guzzler. Something silly-looking? Fun. Something with logos on it? We can negotiate. A stick shift? I’ll learn. A hearse? Don’t tempt us.

"Doesn’t your city have a bus or something?"

Yes, in theory. Our bus system, COTA, has been infamous my entire life for being inefficient, poorly maintained, and for cutting down on services. They have also vociferously lobbied against any railway systems being (re-)installed in Columbus to maintain their monopoly, making us the second largest city of its type with no subway or light rail system. That leaves us with very few artery bus lines that run regularly between classic work hours, and unpredictable, often inaccessible connecting lines that add long wait and travel to your commutes. Oh, and a month’s COTA bus pass is $62 — for two of us, $128, and we’re back to a car payment, which we would be paying for the privilege of watching a bus drive past us often, as has happened to us many times when they spied K’s service dog waiting with us. Yes, that’s illegal. But that’s also life.

"You know cars need a lot of stuff, right? Are you prepared for emergencies? What about bungee cords? A blanket?"

Funny you should ask! K and I like to plan for everything, so we’ve actually thought about these sorts of items a lot. We have an Amazon Wishlist that we’ve been collecting things from as we can, so if you’d like to add to our future car’s gear, that would be very appreciated!

Thank you so much for reading! I know it was a doozy, but I can’t emphasize enough how much this GoFundMe will mean to us. Getting a car and having a utility-bill-worth of medication might not seem like enormous goals, but for us, it would be like winning the lottery. It’s the keys to a new phase of our lives.