I had a hypothetical conversation with my husband over the weekend where we talked about what we would do if we received a significant amount of money, say a lottery win (we’re really overdue some good luck) beyond the basics of paying mortgages and debts off and nice holidays, Caribbean fly cruise if you’re interested, the usual stuff; we talked about health things I’d try if we could.

I have seen, multiple times, a device called a myopro robotic arm orthotic. Essentially an exoskeleton brace that uses nerve signals then provides the movement to match, it would provide a significant upturn in quality of life by allowing me to do more functional tasks like cooking, shopping, which then eventually lead to neuroplasticity. Short term quality of life increase with potential long term benefit; I’m on board

It doesn’t use implanted sensors or electrical stimulation so is one of the very few advanced rehab devices I can use safely.

The price is circa £40,000 plus it needs specialist physiotherapy intervention to train with it. Roughly another £6,000.

Beyond that I have, for a long time, read about the healing properties of stem cell treatments, I have pretty heavily researched it and would like to try a company named bioexcellerator based in Columbia. They combine stem cell therapy with other treatments all based in one centre with a hotel and appear to have a great track record. I’ve never gone as far as looking at pricing but would expect it around £30,000 too. Plus some significant travel costs to get to Colombia.

I’d love to get regular physio led by a physiotherapist not myself; I can and do pick up a lot from the physios and try to build things into my routine but high quality 1:1 physio is something significantly lacking. I do have an nhs community based physio but I’m only allowed one hour per month. My favourite physio I ever encountered was a private one just over 20 miles away, I’d love to be able to get weekly sessions with them. It’s circa £200 a session though so I can’t currently spend that much of our money every month.