SUCCESS!

I am writing this despite still being in a bit of a state of disbelief and shock! This week, the £2,500 target for my wheelchair was reached!

The wheelchair is an everyday chair which will be far more suitable for dancing than my current heavy chair due to its more compact size, lighter weight and modifications such as smaller front castors and slightly angled back wheels.

It will also be a far superior everyday chair that will mean I can use it without being in as much pain because it will be made to fit me better and support me better than the one I currently use, and will be much easier for me to get in and out of my car on my own.

I intend to save for an extra pair of wheels as the wheels on the chair are quick release and so can be swapped for sports wheels with indoor tyres to make dancing much easier than dancing with the outdoor tread on the tyres.

None of this would have been made possible without the support of so many people. People who contributed their time, skills and/or money to help me. Some of them, never having even met me. It is an amazing feeling to have so many people behind me and I hope that in the future I can help someone else as much as these people have helped me.

I want to send out a huge thank you to everyone who contributed anything towards the fund, those who offered funding (of any amount), their time, those who shared the website, twitter or facebook posts, those who donated things to sell at the street party, etc. there are simply too many people to mention everyone.

I do want to mention a few names though: Firstly to Pat Elliott who was the one who originally got all of this going. I would have still been waiting to be assessed by wheelchair services now were it not for Pat (I am on their waiting list and am still waiting for a date to be assessed for a wheelchair!). Pat not only insisted that it would not be inappropriate to do the fundraising, but also offered her amazing talents as an artist to help raise funds. She has now done a few paintings for people as part of the fundraising without keeping any money back for her materials.

She also very kindly donated all of the royalties from her book sales to the fund and I am so very grateful to her. Pat's friend, Sappho from Sparkling Jewellery has kindly covered all of the postage for the paintings meaning all of the money that went towards the painting came to the fund. Another of Pat's friends, Kim Lintern from Kim Lintern Art offered a few of her original paintings for sale with the whole sale price going to the fund, so a big thank you to Kim for that. Details for Pat, Sappho and Kim can be found in the links section of this website, please take a look and support them! In addition, Yvette Wass and several of her friends formed the 5x50 team, Northern Sole and raised a whopping £697 towards the fund, including an afternoon tea Yvette's mum hosted that raised an amazing £150. Thank you ladies! My lovely neighbours arranged the street party to help raise funds and raised £346 - most of it in return for cake! Also a massive thank you to Rony Robinson and the BBC Radio Sheffield team for having me on his show to discuss my condition, the wheelchair dancing and the fund (which is how Yvette's 5x50 team got to know about it) and for retweeting and helping raise awareness of what we were doing. Thank you Rony for helping us along! Several of my friends helped by donating things to sell, baking things for the cake sale, and by donating as well and I don't want them to go unmentioned - that said I don't know who's happy to have their names mentioned so to each of you, a massive thank you. I hope to finalise the details of the order and place the order this week for my new chair and I will do one more blog post to share with you when I have it.