Jet's Journal: Blogging on the Edge of Sanity: A letter to my Lawyer

Until I can pull myself out of this and get back to writing, please accept my apologies and this explanation...

Dear Chuck and Meghan,
Just and update to keep you informed and to thank you once again for your kind help.

What was to be the final (or so I thought) surgery on my knee to repair the last of my injuries, took place on September 28th, in which the metal plates that cartilage was binding on were removed.

There was some swelling around the area that was assumed to be simple post-operative inflammation. Within days of the follow up visit to remove the incision staples, a portion of it at the knee began leaking clear fluid and a small amount of blood. Within a day or two, the bandages were sopping wet and I was in agony.

On a subsequent visit, I was given bandage material and sent home with antibiotics. Every night the material and binding would become sopping wet and it was impossible to move around without an inordinate amount of pain.

It turns out the sac around my knee that holds fluids for lubricating the joint had ruptured and as it leaked out I was experiencing bone-on-bone pain.

A follow up appointment was made Wednesday November 3rd and within minutes I was wheeled across the street to Grant Hospital. Dr. P*** said I needed urgent surgery and before I could digest that news I was scheduled for a follow-up operation Thursday November 4th, and kept overnight to watch for infection or complications. Since I had no idea this would happen until it did, I didn’t bring insulin or heart meds, and if G******* B***** follows it’s usual routine, they won’t pay for them and I’ll be billed hospital prices.

At the moment my left leg is in a straight-line brace, so I haven’t been able to start physical therapy until Dr. Pugh clears me for it on a follow up visit September 17th. My next appointment with Workhealth to renew my GB benefits will be on November 22nd.

My concern is G******* B***** trying to cut off my benefits thinking that two months is long enough to recover from Sept. 28’s surgery. Also because I haven’t made an appointment for physical therapy yet, they may assume I’m MMI.

Since they completely cut me off unexpectantly in 2008 without warning me when I went into heart surgery, I’m concerned they might do it again now. I was in recovery for two months before I realized checks were bouncing all over the place.

Is there some law or rule that says they have to give me fair warning so that I can notify Social Security disability in time to not miss several rent checks and possibly be evicted from my home of nearly 24 years?

Also Dr. M******* has been helping. The PTSD has gotten worse over the last few months with nightmares, flashbacks and recently intense thoughts of suicide. Fortunately, apparently the more I talk about the latter; the less likely it is to occur.

With my financial condition becoming ever worse, I’m left with only $132 a month after basic bills for supplies, gas and groceries. This has left me eating only one meal a day, consisting of a cheap frozen pizza for $1.25 or a couple of sandwiches (I’m a diabetic). Several people have asked why I don’t get a settlement from GB or Donatos, but if I were to do that, it’d be deducted from my Social Security benefits with a net gain of $0.

Disability Check (which deducts GB checks & Social Security part B) $347.00
Total monthly income $1229.68 (two months a year I get an additional check when there are three check Fridays.

Rent $530
Electric $110.00
Phone $77.50
Car insurance $82.67
Car payment $296.81
Total Monthly Expenses: $1096.90

$1229.68
-$1096.90
$132.78 per month, divided by 30 give me $4.43 a day to live on.

I’ve been surviving on drug representative samples for my prescriptions given to me by my doctors.

After refusing to take my expenses into account, the county refuses to help me with Medicare and with a straight face is giving me $16 (less than .50 a day) in food stamps per month. Any emergency like a car problem disables me financially. I’m currently facing a $230 shut off notice from the city electric company.

Food banks ignore how much I’m getting and refuse to help because I’m eligible for food stamps. The same is true of charity pharmacies.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
And thanks again for having my back legally…

My back story for new comers...

Since 2004 I've been

Robbed and nearly beaten to death by three Somolians that didn't speak English. When I only had $51 to split between the three of them, two held me down and began kicking and jumping on me while the leader beat me repeatedly over the head with the butt of his gun… resulting in…

9 staples in my scalp, 3 in my face, two broken ribs, three fractures in my left knee, a shattered left ankle that couldn't be saved so they fused it into one immovable piece and my left foot has a plate, five screws and a cadaver bone holding it together. It took almost six years and over 25 surgeries to repair the damage and I still have one more in September to repair my knee.

Since the attack in November of 2004 a private company instead of the state called Gallagher Bassett has administrated my workman’s comp. In 2007 I was informed that they hadn’t paid a hospital bill of over $20,000 and when it went on my credit report my credit card payments went through the ceiling forcing me into bankruptcy.

In 2005 a blood clot in my leg hit my heart undetected and caused a partial clog that resulted in one of the pulmonary chambers expanding to over twice it's normal size. Occasionally it'd take two or more beats to fill and it was only discovered after I passed out in our parking lot in 2007 and shattered my right arm in four places.

Three stents in 2008 were installed to try to help my heart heal but they didn't work and a massive 2nd heart attack found me in the hospital again with a fractured elbow from the fall. January of 2009 while in the hospital for a triple bypass, they discovered a double bleeding ulcer that was reducing my hemoglobin to near-fatal levels. Four days after I was finally released I had to be rushed back and had 900cc of fluid drained from my left lung.

Two weeks later I had a plate and 20 screws put in my left leg to support and fix my fractured knee, which had healed at an angle so that my leg looked like a clock reading 7:00. (It took four years to get to it because they couldn’t work on it while the ankle and foot were being repaired) A year earlier Gallagher Bassett decided that since I was able to hobble around on that fractured knee I could go back to work, so with it at that angle they demanded I put in 15 applications a week or lose my temporary total checks. After two months of agony, my knee doctor discovered that I was actally walking on the inner part of my foot instead of the bottom and demanded that they stop making me put applications in.

Five days after I got home from the knee surgery, I was rushed unconscious to the hospital. When they’d previously drained the blood off of my lung they nicked a blood vessel and weeks later it exploded in my chest and my damaged heart was pumping into my chest instead of my body. I went in on a Monday and woke up from a coma on a Thursday. The doctor said I had an emergency thoracotomy (sliced open from my collar bone to my left hip then up to between my shoulder blades.) in order to get to the gushing artery and I’d lost 2 ½ times my normal blood content and died (requiring CPR) twice on the emergency room operating table. A thoracotomy is one of the hardest things to recover from and they say I’ll be experiencing agony when I sneeze, yawn or cough for the next five years or more because of the damage done to my still healing ribs from the triple bypass.

I was told this January that I had to have a combination pacemaker/defibrillator installed because I still wasn’t improving from the triple bypass. The damaged heart chamber had come back to life and was beating out of sync to the rest of my heart.

A year into this ordeal in 2005 I was told I was a type II diabetic. Without warning blood vessels began exploding in my eyes and it required 13 laser surgeries in the space of 18 months to cauterize all of them to stem the leakage. This has taken most of the peripheral vision in both eyes and I had to start wearing glasses for the first time in my life.

Up until 2003 I was considered a “muscle-hunk” and was a professional portrait and landscape artist and photographer and had become involved in the male porn industry in San Diego as a cameraman and line producer. I’d wager that you have some of my artwork in your house right now as I scored a lucrative deal to do line drawings for appliance handbooks for VCRs, DVD players and all sorts of electronic appliances.

I earned enough to move into a penthouse in downtown Columbus and purchased a new Sebring convertible in 2004. A friend with a private jet would let me “hitchhike” when he went on business trips to the west coast five times a year and I had friends and lovers and led a wonderful and secure life. In 2004 I got a frantic call from a local friend I used to work for begging me to help out delivering pizzas because his whole staff had been either fired or quit… leading up to the robbery/beating.

As the surgery bills mounted and mounted, I emptied $45,000 from my savings in nearly three years to make up for the lost income to pay the rent utilities insurance and car payments… by 2007 it was all gone. A good friend committed suicide in 2005 because he couldn’t repay a handshake loan I’d made to him for $25,000 business loan to fix his bar’s roof. I’d never asked him to repay it and had no idea he was so distraught. I was devastated.

While I was in the hospital last year for the heart, knee and ulcer surgeries Gallagher Bassett began contesting everything they paid and dragged me into Workman’s Comp court nine times gambling I wouldn’t show up and they’d win by default. I showed up with crutches, in a wheel chair, I had external fixators sticking out of my leg, but I showed up. All nine times they lost. Being bad losers they combed through my hospital bills this year and refused to pay for any medications that didn’t have to do with workman’s comp covered surgeries. I suddenly got back-bills for my insulin, my heart meds and any pain meds for my chest that didn’t have to do with covered surgeries. Since the only insurance I have now is Medicare disability and I’ve hit their “gap” the bills fell on me to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars. The hospitals won’t let me “self-medicate” so I have no choice but to pay inflated hospital prices for drugs I already have. This has also resulted in 5-9 collection agency calls a day.

On January 1st of this year I became a victim of the Medicare change over and my 14 prescriptions per month soared from $15-22 to $389 and that didn’t include my insulin. I received a letter from Medicare that I make exactly $67 dollars a year over their limit in order to help me with my prescription costs. Up until then I thought it was a ridiculous myth that people actually had to choose between eating and buying necessary drugs.

I went from January to mid February with no insulin. Since then I’ve been depending on three different doctors providing me with drug representative samples of insulin, heart and pain meds. They also announced that I had to now pay $105 per month for Medicare part B and had to pay Anthem Blue Shield a $31 per month premium or lose what little benefits I have/had.

Since I get a total of $1,700 a month in workman’s comp and Social Security disability and most charities have limits of $1,200 per month-I lose. I’m on Medicare part B to cover my hospital bills. Charities such as food banks and pharmacies won’t help me because I have to provide proof I’ve been dropped by Anthem Blue Shield first. I haven’t been able to pay them a single premium this year and owe them over $168… they still won’t drop me, so I’m ineligible for help elsewhere.

Then I went to Medicaid. Remember how close I was to the limit for help with SS? If Medicaid pays the $105 per month, then I get that extra money to buy groceries… however when I get it, my reported income goes up and it takes me just barely over their income limit for help so they drop me, which brings me just below their income limit, and then I’m eligible again. Because of all of the repeated re-applications, rejections and approvals I’ve been accused of trying to defraud Medicaid. Because of this I have maybe $5 left in my checking account after I pay bills and rent from my checks. If anything like a flat tire needing plugged or not enough gas to get to a doctor’s appointment occurs, I have to make myself feel like a beggar holding a cardboard sign at an expressway ramp begging for quarters. Hence my close friends have all drifted off.

The safeties are there for the poor and the rich, but once you fall from middle class, you have to lose everything before you can get help. The depression keeps me from creating my beloved art and all my emotions now-a-days come out of pill bottles. I can’t move out from my beloved home of 22 years because I’d never raise the first month’s rent and security on a new place. I’d sell the 8-year-old Sebring, but I owe more on it than it’s worth, despite it being in immaculate condition with only having a little over 45,000 miles on it because I never go anywhere. I put 30,000 miles on it through business and pleasure travel the first year and only 15,000 in the last 6 years after becoming a psychological shut-in. I go days sleeping as much as 18 hours a day or 48 hours without it because of very real flashbacks and nightmares that leave me screaming in the night.

I used to live a life where I could walk into any store anywhere and buy anything without thinking of price. Since my constant hospital stays, I’ve lost my muscle tone because of lack of being able to go to a gym and all that beautiful physique has turned to blubber. I’ve lost my looks, driven every friend I have away because of the unpredictable post traumatic stress outbursts and/or depression and feeling sorry for myself. I leave my apartment maybe once or twice a week.

I had to renew my driver’s license before my birthday this month and failed the eye test. I have no choice but to drive illegally until I can pass another after some more surgeries. Now I find I have to have emergency surgery on my left eye, but no one to take me to the hospital at 5 in the morning and no money for a cab.

A letter to my Lawyer

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