Family asks for help as KCK woman gets treatment to walk again

KANSAS CITY, Kan. — One Kansas City, Kansas mom’s fight to walk again is bigger than just her. She wants the simple joys that many take for granted back.

Things like playing with her four-year-old or going somewhere without having to call ahead.

“It’s really hard to not be able to pick him up, swing him around, you know, like most momma’s do, not being able to walk him into preschool like a normal mom,” Rayme Hays, who’s fighting to walk again, said.

But that chance to put one foot in front of the other again could come at a big cost.

Hays health struggles started 15 years ago when she was first diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at just 22-years-old.

Years later it was fibromyalgia and then something she thought was a minor, a torn labrum in her hip.

“After I had my surgery, everything was better, it was a lot better,” she said.

But an unexpected diagnosis would come next.

‘Your body feels like you stuck your feet in snow like when you were little, that it gets so cold that it burns,” Hays said.

Post surgery, she was diagnosed with chronic regional pain syndrome, one of the most debilitating and painful conditions known to the human body

She lost her ability to walk, to move around, she relies on a motorized wheelchair. The condition is so painful that an epidemiological survey found nearly 50 percent of people with CRPS contemplate suicide.

“That has went across my mind regularly, that they would be better off without me just because of everything you deal with. After finding the Spero clinic, it’s given me hope, it’s given me hope and made me think completely different,” she said.

It is that clinic that’s given her a new perspective but it will come at a big cost.  Insurance won’t cover it, the price nearly $4,000 a week for 14 weeks of intensive rehab. Her family is now prepared to sell everything they own, so she can walk again.

“I realized I’m going to have my life back and it wasn’t an option for me. I didn’t care what we had to sell, what we had to do, as long as I had my family,” Hays said.

She urges everyone to advocate for their health because it’s the most important thing you can do.

This family needs your help, so if you are able to assist them so they can make it to Arkansas to this clinic and Rayme can walk again, click here.

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