Hello! My name is Amber Stingel. I had an amputation in January 2022 and I am on a CCC+ waiver. The amputation had to be done due to a non-healing wound covering the entire back of my left leg from the knee down, as well as lymphedema and recurring cellulitis infections. I spent almost a month after my amputation in the hospital to ensure I did not get any infections and everything healed up properly. Given all of this, I am highly susceptible to illness. The number of Covid, RSV, and Flu cases are continuing to climb, especially in my area. This keeps me inside for the most part. Even our kids cannot come visit when they have even the sniffles. I've only ever had virtual facilitator visits and they have been a dream and eases my stress about possibly being exposed to something that could do permanent damage or kill me. 

In addition, in person visits are going to make it especially hard on facilitators. Doing visits at home they can get those done easy and quickly. However, having to drive to everyone's home is difficult. This could also mean facilitators would have to hire additional people to handle the additional load of patients because some of the patients do not live close to any facilitators. This is very much a hardship for the facilitator. 

Please let us continue virtual visits, not only for convenience, but to keep everyone healthy and make sure we don't catch and pass on anything. Thank you!