@rah 30 April 2022 more from that month

A serious question: Please be honest and direct with your answers. Those of you who know me at least a little bit know that I have some health problems and especially with my hips. Last Saturday I had a consultation with a specialist and in layman's terms what has happened is that the cartilage has completely gone from the "ball" part of the joint where it slots into the "socket" and there is extensive wear on the actual bone itself. Looking at the pictures I would say that at least half an inch (1.25 cm) has simply gone. This means that on the facing side the "ball" is actually concave (turns inward like a cave) rather than convex (turns outwards like a ball). It has worn unevenly which is an additional factor in pain as I am rubbing bone against bone whenever I walk - and some days, often weather dependent - it is worse. MamaRah likes me to go for walks with her and BabyRah and often I have tried to push through the pain so I can be with them. The specialist advised me only to walk to the point of pain and no further which limits me to about 40 minutes on a good day. MamaRah likes to take BabyRah out for upto two hours, which is beyond my capacity. We are all missing out. The good news is that it can be fixed through a Laparoscopy. in which the bone surface is rebuilt and repaired - please don't ask me to describe exactly how. I know they have to stretch and pop the joint to get access but that is about it. I did high school biology but I am not a surgeon However, here comes the rub. It is not available on the public health service and the cost is 19,925 PLN which works out at just under $5000 USD or £4000 GDP. Please feel free to check the exact conversion as I have estimated. I am thinking of running a GoFundMe - however many of you know that in October and January I ran a campaign on here that raised approximately £200 to help #fundsimonkelly. Incidentally I had some news from his wife last week that could be summarised as "he is ok, but the current course of treatment isn't working' so they are meeting with another specialist to discuss options in the next few days. So the question is after doing the fundraiser for Simon Kelly is it acceptable to run one for myself. Obviously if I use GoFundMe I will no longer be hiding behind a level of anonymity. I am not planning to run it directly through Noise as I have done previously, for one think much of the funds came from me tipping responses as well as the generous tips of many in the community. So the question is - when bearing all this in mind is it appropriate to run a fund raiser for myself and drop frequent links into my Noise feed (with no obligation of course for people to donate). Attached is an image for information only. It is obviously not me. In my case as I mentioned the cartilige has gone as has a significant amount of the bone.