This is Marlene's family raising money for the difficult period following her injury from a severe accident in Bensheim, Germany, in April 2015, which almost cost her life. She just wanted to go to the lake for a swim but never returned to her home in Bensheim since then. She was almost completely across the street when a car hit her at high speed.  

After one month in intensive care and five more months in the hospital, Marlene has now been released, and is trying to make ends meet in her small rental apartment in Berlin. Marlene is an artist, actress, filmmaker and performer and has little means to sustain herself during this period. The legal case against the driver's insurance is ongoing but it is a long process, which we hope will deliver a positive result. In the meantime, she has to cover many costs, including for a wheelchair, an electric wheelchair, and lots of caretaking.

The health insurance and social security pay only a fraction of all this. For wheelchairs, they offer not more than a single pay-out of 1300 Euro. Marlene needs two wheelchairs for her particular medical condition: an active wheelchair, which costs 3300 Euro, and an electric wheelchair, which we have found online for 8300 Euro instead of the regular price of over 10,000 Euro. Furthermore, social services take on only a small part of the monthly care expenses. We are not yet sure about the precise figure for the remaining monthly costs as we are still just finding our way through the insurance labyrinth, but we expect it to exceed her income by over 1500 Euro per month. 

In addition she needs means to retain a lawyer and make changes to her apartment so she can live there. At this point, she cannot get in and out by herself. We will be uploading more details on the costs. Luckily, Marlene is an artist and a real fighter, and we hope she can do her art again some day soon and enliven our lives with her creativity.