Call to help Nova with fundraiser for adapted car
WEXFORD MUM GAIL MORAN MAKES APPEAL AFTER FAMILY CAR WAS DAMAGED CLOSE TO HOME
PROUD WEXFORD MOTHER Gail Moran is calling on the people of Wexford to come together to contribute to an online fundraiser for an adapted car that will change the lives of her daughters Nova (3) and Indie (6).
Her goal is to raise €5,000 and she has teamed up with Mobility Ireland in order to get the car the family require, after her own Hyundai was left with broken windows after being vandalised in Wexford town.
She explained that having the car would give freedom to herself and her daughters, but would also make day to day tasks easier such as shopping for medical supplies or attending doctor’s appointments.
‘ The car I had was a small economical Hyundai 30. I’ve had it for the last few years but it was vandalised just on my street here in Wexford. The windscreen, the back window and the two side windows were broken. Initially I rang my insurance company, and they told me to contact a glass repair company but they told me I wasn’t covered for these repairs. I was worried about Indie cutting herself on the glass, and my neighbour offered to buy the car off me even with the broken windows.
‘I’m not working so I couldn’t get the finance to buy another car, as I’m a full time carer to both my kids. Nova has very complex needs and requires 24 hour car, myself and her nurses are the only people who are medically trained to look after her’.
Although the family have spent most of the pandemic cocooning, Gail looks forward to the day she can take the girls out together for trips, something that’s impossible to do now.
‘I’ve never been able to bring my two kids out together in a car and as sisters, I want them to be able to experience things together. With the car I had, by the time you put Nova in and all her equipment, there’s no room for anybody else. She’s still on a oxygen monitor and requires oxygen to be carried around with her. She has a suction machine, an adapted buggy as well as feeding equipment and it all has to be sterile and disposable.
‘Novie will be starting playschool in September in Ard Aoibhinn and I need to start getting her out of the house and bringing her places. During Covid, I haven’t had her out in the pram in places where people are.
‘ The car would be a great help for getting Novie to her medical appointments. I’ve been using the Bumbulance and they’re brilliant, but just being out for the whole day gets Nova out of sorts as it’s a sensory overload when we’re normally not out of the house very much. Being a full time carer can be lonely, and I was ashamed to put up a GoFundmePage at first, but it was on advice from Mobility Ireland and I realised that Nova does really need this. All that matters in the world to me are my two girls, and I just want to be able to give them a better life.
These last few weeks I’ve been getting a loan of cars just to go do the shopping, get Nova’s medical supplies for the month and that can take two runs. I had relying on other people for a lift, and I’d like to have the ability to bring her to hospital if she stopped breathing and not have to wait on an ambulance.
‘In the context of Covid, I wouldn’t be comfortable using public transport. My eldest Indie, I wouldn’t bring her shopping with me as she touches everything and puts things into her mouth, and it would be the same on public transport’.
Nova is wheelchair bound but has come on leaps and bounds and continues to defy the odds.
‘Indie has autism but I wasn’t introduced to the world of disability and the medical side until Novie came along.
‘She wasn’t meant to live when she was born and for me, she was proving them all wrong. She’s still here now and when she was born I never thought I’d be at the stage I am now.
‘Novie was born with the condition Pierre Robin Sequence, about four kids in Ireland are born with it a year so she was born with no jaw or chin. I gave birth in Wexford Hospital but the equipment in there was all too big for the small mouth on her. She was being kept alive manually by the midwife and doctors there for about five hours. I was advised to get her baptised, so we did that and she then went straight to Temple Street but during that time she suffered brain injuries and a stroke.
‘ Temple Street struggled to incubate her as well because of her size but they got her on life support. They didn’t think she’d make it at first and she stopped breathing and was resuscitated on and off for the first few months. She was in hospital for the first 14 months of her life and spent that time in ICU, she was fed with a peg after nine months and the team there built her a jaw.
‘Leaving Temple Street I was told that she was going to be completely blind and non responsiv. I was worried but it’s two years in June that she’s home and since then she’s starting to develop. She’s doing very well in that her muscle tone is better and if I put a toy in front of her she grabs it so her vision has come around but she’s very sensitive to light. She has been doing physio for the last year and a half and now Nova has herself sitting up. She might fall suddenly, but we put that down to the stroke’.
Gail said that if the people of Wexford manage to raise €5,000, she will put more money towards the car when she gets a disability grant later in the year.
Search ‘Novie needs a adapted car’ on www.gofundme.com to make a donation.
NOVA WASN’T MEANT TO LIVE BUT SHE’S PROVING THEM ALL WRONG. THE CAR WOULD BE A GREAT HELP AS SHE REALLY DOES NEED THIS