I need £287 to get my landlady's car fixed, plus money for petrol as we're struggling to pay for that. I'm going through a disability benefit appeal and she's a pensioner. I rely on her to drive me to my many hospital appointments. After multiple reposts here and in mutual aid over weeks, I did get three donations totalling £141, which I'm really grateful for, but nowhere near enough to fix the car which means I had to spend nearly half of what I got already on taxis to hospital appointments (as hospital transport needs to be booked in advance and I hadn't booked it as I thought I'd have received enough help to get the car fixed by then) and will have to spend more next week paying for hospital transport to my next appointments. I have multiple appointments every week.
You've probably heard this Terry Pratchett quote: “The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
Well this is the situation I'm in now. If i could get enough to get the car fixed and petrol to last a while, it would work out a lot cheaper long term than having to pay for individual trips to hospital in taxis and using hospital transport - which costs between £12 to £26 per hospital visit depending on how far away the hospital you're going to is (and taxis are even more expensive). If the car was fixed, it would cost nowhere near that amount per trip in petrol.
I've had multiple people send me advice on things I should be doing rather than asking for money here. It's not helpful. Whatever you're going to suggest, I've already tried it. For instance I'm not eligible for things like para transit or the St john ambulance hospital transport because you have to have very specific disabilities to use those - like dementia or needing an oxygen mask. I don't meet the criteria. Yes, I contacted them. The nearest bus stop is half a mile away and I suffer severely limited mobility due to having had a stroke. As I've said, the hospital transport that is available to me must be paid for. Every other suggestion I've been sent either isn't available here, costs money or I'm not eligible. I would much rather have an official service that guarantees me the help I need rather than begging online and not getting the help I need, but there really isn't anywhere else to turn.
I've had some really judgmental responses and things like "In my city we have XYZ help available so you must have that too," and I don't! I live in a little seaside town in the middle of nowhere, half the place isn't even covered by public transport at all! Just because a big city in another country has a specific type of help available, does not mean that I have access to that.
I already had to cancel one endocrinology appointment for my thyroid cancer treatment because I hadn't received any responses, and since then I've had to spend nearly half the money I got on taxis as i was too late to book hospital transport. I now have hospital transport booked for two appointments next week which will use up another £30 of what i was given and if i still can't get the help I need to fix the car and pay for petrol, the rest will very quickly be used up on more hospital transport.
I don't even know what to say any more. But if you won't help, please at least don't send me any more unsolicited advice or judgment with undercurrents of how I'm not trying hard enough and shouldn't be asking for help on here. I'm already tired, brain foggy, ill and stressed, I don't want to have to keep explaining to random people why their suggestions won't work for me.
If anyone can help my paypal is the_mighty_tabs@hotmail.co.uk
