Greetings! Interwebs fellows~ My name is Ra’anan Fickler(רענן פיקלר), as it says in the name of the poster.

And I require monetary assistance to pay for a high-performance hybrid prosthetic-orthotic (KAFO) for my legs, which are designed to offload weight from the damaged part of the leg.

 
The ExoSym: Featured Technology: Hanger Clinic ExoSym® (Formerly IDEO) | Hanger Clinic

Goal: 50,000 Shekels. Not THAT much, but it will suffice for one leg + flight there, etc.

2nd goal: 80,000. One EXO-SKELETON for EACH leg. That will be RAD.

Any amount at the end of the day will be used to better my health and further medical needs. After all, If the ExoSym will eliminate the pain, which is unlikely, but then I'll need to remove the left leg, and that's a whole thing by itself with months (year? s??) of rehabilitation.

The current state of health:
- 100% working ability loss.
- Left leg, from bottom up and just past the knee, around 22 hours of pain out of the day. Every day I wake up due to pain after about 5-7 hours of bad sleep. It's specific because to be able to sleep I need to take sleeping pills + large quantities of medicinal cannabis every night, and together they are effective for about 5-6 hours. After that, it depends on what triggers the pain and how bad it is, but i wake up. 
(personal note: I do not recommend waking every morning by intense, sharp and burning pain).
-The right leg is showing signs of built-up damage due to working for two. So that one will "go" at some point as well.
- Weather changes intensify pain. Heat causes "the twins" to hurt more during usage. Cold hurts all the joints.
- In addition, i fight daily with psychosomatic pain(fairly easy to identify mostely but hard to get rid or ignore), PTSD and "severe chronic resistant depression" 
- Can't sleep with my partner in the same bed anymore, as one of the side effects of PTSD is, how she described it: "Breakdancing during your sleep". The cat described it as a good enough reason to walk up to my sleeping face and hit me.
- Any use of muscle in said area of pain increases it. And yet i make sure to keep making my walks and physiotherapy for years.
- The pain also supports the wreck of my mental health. Who would imagine that being in constant pain/fear of pain/waiting for pain that always arrives is also quite bad for the mind and not just the body... Fun fact: That's why torture both works and fails.
- Can't wear long pants and socks often, even in winter as the constant touch hurts.
- Every single day is a struggle to live. I don't want to die, but living seems impossible. The pain is unmanageable most of the time.
- The damage has reached the point it has become visible on the outside as well:

Right foot.

Left. 

Side by side. 

I am aware of different levels of free time, interest, and attention span. As such, here are THREE versions for your choosing:

1. Very short "too long didn't read" which will take about 60 seconds to read.
2. More detailed TL;DR.
3. "So I was born during..." version.

1. During military training, my left leg got badly damaged, and for 15ish years, I have tried to get it working well steadily. Not working. Ups and downs, sure. Unfortunately, over time, the downs beat the ups, and in recent years, my health has been crashing FAST. I need treatment NOW. And I can get it abroad. Health is expensive. 
Please assist me in trying to fix this broken-down bio-electric machine before it decomposes from the inside out

Despite my annoying brain telling me it's weak and bad of me, I am asking for your, the reader, and/or anyone else's help. I AM desperate; the cost from here on out to be "functionally healthy" has gotten too expensive.


The gang, circa 2026.


Left: Me. Right: Yuzu-chan. Japan 2018

2. Tasked Gemini to help with it for the perfect length and added notes.

Service-Related Injury: Sustained during active duty; a lack of immediate intervention resulted in chronic physical complications and long-term trauma.

Systemic Health Impact: Prolonged reliance on intensive medication caused significant internal health issues, necessitating a total cessation of standard pharmacological treatments.

Chronic Functional Decline: A 15-year history of fluctuating physical and mental health has reached a critical point of waning ability for daily functioning.

Financial Exhaustion: Multiple attempts to sustain a career in software development were interrupted by health relapses, completely depleting personal savings and a lot of family resources.

The Solution: Funding for a specialized mobility system (ExoSym) and related travel to restore physical independence and prevent the liquidation of remaining retirement assets.

Important notes:
- I was not some heroic soldier. I was hurt in training that just happened to be during a war.
- I was given help over the years from the national insurance and private insurance during most of my time at SKAI(Kenshoo). But it was just not enough over such a long period.

Would you please assist me financially?

Little 17-year-old Raanan. Eyes so sparkly and full of happiness (please note that I am from an Eastern European house and heritage. This IS a "very happy Polish person")

3. The “yappy” version. No summarization here:

Got hurt during training in an active war zone. But it is indirectly of the active war around the base to be honest. I was hurt in physical training in the military and its wartime so no one has time for a fresh soldier crying (even literally) that his foot realy-realy-REALLY-!!! hurts. I had a choice to continue or go to military jail. Simple.

Things got very bad very fast, as expected by me and no one else including military doctors. Got silenced with Anti-Pain Meds (APM) that made everything irrelevant with two soldiers going with me everywhere in case I get a heart attack/death due to the number of pills.
After too much of those over some time was sent from a different base to a civilian hospital due to my yellowish skin and general apathy. Doc said, in a classic Israeli way: “Shit (liver and kidney) is messed up inside. Stop with the APM. No matter how fun it feels to not be in horrid pain. Sucks to be you”.

IDF again gave me a choice, continue serving normally and or be kicked out, either way without medical treatment from them. So, I left.

SKIP 15ish years I’ve had ups and down with the levels of chronic pain and over time the mental as well with PTSD and everything. Currently it is as bad as it ever has been since, it got somewhat better following a year in bed and several of physio/Hydro/Electrotherapy and a respectable number of medical drugs and pretty much whatever I could try. Yes, I did reach the depths of stuff that obviously seemed like a scam but I was out of options, even alternative ones, so goodbye money+savings and let us see what will happen when I enter this oxygen rich tank (which I mention because it was pretty good for a few hours of less pain, just too expensive).

“What about mental health exactly?” Well ya… things not great here either. At 2014, before I was even officially diagnosed with PTSD not thought I had it, got assigned to an open unit in psychiatric hospital (8:00-14:00 6 days a week). As I had no more options left to try at that time, I had lost hope and broke down. The reason I’m alive is because I gave my word to my psychologist that before ending my life, give him a call and allow him to offer me a reasonable offer. I always do my best to keep my word. And so I did, and he managed to get me a spot in a place that have a waiting-list months long, “thanks” to the severity.
That was an acceptable new thing I can try, so I was reasonable and agreed. Took about half a year? 8 months-ish until a working treatment, that again combined several things besides psychiatric medicine that worked. The physical and mental pains have lessened enough for me to be willing to give life a try again and went studying programming and finding a job (back then it was just as the bubble burst).

Many different levels of functioning over those years. And now I’m close enough to zero % that even the private insurance company didn’t argue much before paying 50% of what I should have gotten monthly (Took them about 48 hours of find a technicality hidden in the contract which for that my lawyer advised against fighting in court).

“Didn’t you work in tech for 7 years after studies and the last 2 as a DevOps engineer? Where is money?”
Ah. While I had a nice enough “up” to go study software development and start working, but then a down started and reached the point I was not able to work 100% and got to months without working. 
This feels like the place to say thank you, SKAI(previously Kenshoo), for letting me keep my spot even when it was literally months of recovery.

During those 15 years I’ve worked on-off but twice I’ve emptied my account and savings to the point of loans or/and money from my parents and/or the National Insurance Institute.

Picture break:

Baby nerds <3

On paper, I was let go and haven’t worked since 02/24. But I lost the ability during about a month after the “Seven of October” during which my sister and her husband + 2 nephews were at one of the Kibutzim. And by that point my situation was bad from every standpoint. Even if I had the energy to try to continue to hide how dire things are, I couldn’t anymore as I was getting anxiety attacks from ZOOM meeting as the portraits in it looked to my brain like the posters of the murdered. And if I spoke to a person one on one, zoom or face-to-face, I’d just start crying, heavily. Oh, my poor manager at that time… So, I was allowed to take the time I needed to get back on my feet. Tried after a while once and it was obvious that I’m not really going to get better soon.
But thankfully, the downsizing in the company affected me “suddenly” only after I reached out and said that I’m ready to be back and managed to have a convo without crying. Thanks again SKAI.

Now, Dec 2025, I am once again out of options, especially as it seems to be a complicated issue mixing several systems in the body. This comes after years of tests, treatments and comparisons of many things over time, AND different doctors, even private ones. Those are expensive but sometimes after 3-4, the next has a new idea. And this funding campaign is for medical needs in general, the ExoSym specifically and then the long recovery and therapy. Also, technically, still possible I’ll need to remove the leg at some point and that would be a whole new things by itself.

Stay healthy. Get checked more often. I cannot overstate just how much chronic issues in general and, both physical and psychosomatic pain specifically, can be like toxin for your body and mind over time.

ExoSym is type of exo-skeleton that is expected to help the damaged parts of the leg stay at rest while I’m walking and allow them to heal better + hurt less. But it is very expensive and requires me to get to Washington DC for a time AND tbh, I’m not even sure if I should get only for the very damaged leg or another for the leg that worked for 1.8 legs for so long.

Someone like me, especially ATM, would have to empty my savings and this time, I will have to dig into the pension and every single person ever told me to NEVER TOUCH IT UNLESS IT’S THE VERY LAST OPTION. Some indeed shouted. So, ya… I would very much like to avoid doing that and not “just” stay alive but be able to still have a future.

Me. While typing the first draft of this campaign. 2025.

Now, regardless of whether you can spare change or a private plane, I will be equally thankful.

Wanna do a good deed? Donate, please and thank you.

Love and kisses,
Raanan Fickler.