'There's no stopping her now' – Mum tells of joy after daughter raises £13k for bionic arm

Keeley Bexton, 15, has had to use a prosthetic arm all her life after suffering from amniotic band syndrome during childbirth, leading to her being born without the lower part of her arm.

However, after a year of crowd-funding, the student has managed to raise enough money to buy a new, 3D-printed "hero" bionic prosthetic, which she said, has changed her life forever.

Keeley's mum, Michelle Bexton, 47, from Wednesfield, said: "Honestly, I think I was in shock that it was actually happening to be honest. Especially to just regular people like us.

"It all started when Keeley saw a girl on Tiktok who had two of these bionic hero arms, Keeley was like 'Why can't I have something like that'. We started looking into it and honestly, people like us just can't afford stuff like that."

Keeley's mum said that in school her daughter was embarrassed about her condition, saying that she often hide her arm because she was sick of people staring.

Keeley and Michelle visited Open Bionics, a prosthetics company in Bristol, which helped them with pricing and even went the extra mile to help them set up a Gofundme page to begin crowdfunding.

Michelle said: "We thought it was going to be such a long process, but they put on these probes to see how strong her muscles are and to see if she was strong enough to close her hand, and luckily she was.

"They did some measurements and found the strongest part of her arm to attack these probes and that was it, they said all they needed was the money now and it was ours."

The family struggled with initial crowd-funding, raising a small amount of money over one-year through family and friends.

Michelle said: "As a parent you really want to do everything you can for your children, I'm unemployed so it was heartbreaking when I thought we couldn't afford this arm, but the support we got, it was just like wow!

"Open Bionics really helped us along with this, they went above and beyond for us and we can't thank them enough. It was fantastic, it seriously makes you glad for humanity."

After fundraising for a year but no closer to their goal, Michelle and Keeley were shocked when they were contacted by the historic Worshipful Company of Glovers, who offered to pay the rest of the fundraising goal for Keeley's arm.

Michelle continued: "We did a video call with The Glovers and had a chat, and they said they would phone us back, they told us they were going to fund the rest of the amount that we needed.

"It was absolutely amazing, from people that we don't even know. We really can't thank them enough for helping her dream to come true."

Keeley had relied on NHS-funded prosthetics to give her a sense of normality, but the low quality of the free units meant that she would often be uncomfortable or would rub her arm so badly she would end up with friction burns.

Michelle said: "There is so much difference between her new one and her old one, sometimes she would have to wear gloves because if she sweated too much she would become stuck, or if she moved too much it would burn her.

"She really saw it as an annoyance, it just got in the way. This arm has function, the covers can be taken off to let in air, it's amazing, she said she feels like a superhero with it on.

The student who is studying to become a solicitor, now wants to help other people achieve their dreams, but also follow her passion for music.

Keeley's mum said: "These gloves really help with everything, she wants to be a lawyer, which takes a lot of confidence, but she also wanted to play the guitar, which she could never do before, but now that she can move her fingers, she has a good chance at it.

"Before the bionic arm, things were much harder for Keeley, even silly things like painting her nails and getting dressed, but there's nothing she can't do now.

"It's really opened new doors for her, not just physically but also mentally. There's just no stopping her now."