I really didn't want to have to post this like this, I'm not sure if I'm violating any rules of the forums, but I've just signed up over at "JustGiving For Causes" as well. This is a seriously dire moment, in which time is of the essence. Against every instinct of privacy and self reliance that I have left in case I don’t make it - DonationTo page http://www.donationto.com/Help-Homeless-Young-Man-Battling-CML-Leukemia - Still a work in progress, the documentary video that's has over 3 years worth of all this documented as much as one can is in the process of being made to be uploaded this week. But due to the reason of me winding up homeless and being on foot again by friday.... well it kinda leaves me no choice. So I did this in one sitting and I have 4 days to secure a vehicle to stay off the street, so here it goes…. I kinda started writing this nearly four years ago now ironically, the ending week of November of 2011 and the first week of December 2011, a moonshot, an “SOS” letter if you will. In 2010, I was injured in an auto accident, July 28th, 2010 to be exact, 22 years old. Both vehicles were totaled on impact, I lost everything, my car, all my money, my job, college, even the woman I wanted to marry. In the ER that day, I'll never forget.... the two doctors handling my case in the hospital peeped in about 3-4 hours later in the exam room and had asked me if I had a skull fracture in the past, I was puzzled and the word lawyer came out of my mouth, their eyes went super white and they fled the room immediately. Before I say anything else, lets just say that lawyers and doctors these days aren't the respectable professions they used to be, especially lawyers. That being said.... I knew I was going to have to hire an attorney to try and get my life back. Little did I know, it was only the beginning of what now feels like the end. The injuries are as follows From 7-28-2010 Through January of 2011 1. Suspected rotator cuff tear followed by diagnostic left shoulder arhtroscopy Nov. 30th of 2010 2. Dorsal Scapular Nerve Damage Left sided 3. Winging shoulder blade, otherwise known as a “Sick Scapula” or Dyskinesis with left shoulder synovitis. 4. Tendinopathy and soft tissue fray around the left rotator cuff 5. Brachial Plexus Nerve Root Impingement 6. Diffuse bulging discs at all lumbar levels, all cervical levels, and some in my thoracic spine as well which by now, have worsened to an unknown state 7. Carpal Tunnel syndrome in my wrists due to the atrophy of not being able to play drums From January 26th to March 23rd of 2011 8. Left hip impact cam lesion causing an impingement in my left hip requiring surgery which has also worsened now to an unknown state 9. Bone spurs (otherwise known as CAM Lesions) Requiring surgery 10. Potential loose bodies of cartilage from the underlying labral tear from the cam lesion Left hip SI dysfunction with possible sacral and vertebral malrotation requiring spine surgery Now after being diagnosed with cml leukemia, I can no longer have these operations unless i achieve remission for at least 3-5 years. Making these injuries permanent and likely costing me not only my body but various joints. All of which could’ve been avoided and averted, more on that later. Back on the rails.... My family wasn't and still isn’t supportive at all of this, as I battle through each and every day, matter of fact, they contributed to a lot of the exacerbation of the entirety of my unfortunate situation. I write this letter because I am homeless now, in large part because of them, but that I will elaborate on later. By august of 2010 I was 3 days a week deep in physical therapy for my left shoulder for 9 months after the accident and between doctor appointments. About 4 and half to 5 months before and 3 to 4 more after a shoulder surgery on Nov. 30th of 2010, nobody in my family would drive me to the medical facility, I had to have a friend drive me and wait 7 hours in the waiting room. When I got back, I was subjected to more ridicule, family calling me a faker, mocking me, degrading and belittling me in any way they could. I'll never forget not being able to eat or sleep for 6 days and 15 hours straight post-op (aside from crackers and ginger ale.) Got so bad that I got stuck floor 3-4 days into post-op, I thought I was going to be sick so wound up unable to move on the floor by the toilet in the bathroom, when my dad finally walked in and kicked me out, well, he couldn't so he just started peeing in the toilet with my head next to it on the floor. I still remember the drops hitting my face to this day as I lay unable to move on that floor. Only person that came to my help was a now estranged addict younger brother who helped me up and and into a chair where I laid relatively immobile and unconscious for 8 hour straight. Throughout this time, I had been experiencing really bad back and rib pain, and my left hip was making some weird noises. I had mentioned this to my then physical therapists in the months prior, but they said stay the course with my shoulder and ask about it when you're cleared and able to move on to looking into other areas of the body, sure they gave me some home exercises to try out ahead of time, but they didn’t really open my eyes like July of 2012 did (I’ll get to that later.) So I did in January of 2011. I was referred to a hip and spine guy at the same practice, and what he had found and suspected, was a nail right on the head, though it took almost 2 years to confirm. He suspected that I had a torn labrum in my left hip, with bone spurs or what's otherwise known as a "CAM Lesion" on my left hip, causing an impingement and deteriorating the joint every day I go without surgical correction, stating that if he was right, I would need a hip scope to save my joint. Now, he figured this out just off of a bare bones x-ray and an open MRI. He also said he had found diffuse bulging discs throughout my entire spine, mainly a lot of bad pathology in my neck, and my lumbar spine, making it impossible for me to sit and work and now with the injury, could no longer rely on my body to secure a source of income. So I wondered what I was to do, I couldn't continue treating due to my health insurance exhausting all my physical therapy visits for the calendar year, and had just received a packet in the mail from the same company stating that everything going on with my hip was being deemed "experimental, investigational, and diagnostic," therefor it wouldn't be covered. So there I was in March of 2011, not really sure how bad my hip was, working on my shoulder, not knowing what to do. So I decided later that year to go back to school out of spite of all the “fantasy bond” abuse I had endured up to that point from my family…. thanks for that lydia. Was thinking about going back to the International Academy of Technology and Design, but decided on the Art Institute in Chicago. I had been trying to teach myself how to make video games and wanted to learn how to code/program, and make websites also but didn’t know where to start. So I went somewhere I had in mind for a while, don’t know why exactly, but when I was there, being around other people like me, artists, creationists, I’d had never felt more at home in my entire life. Somewhere I could be of service to others, to show them, tell them that anybody bashing them for their efforts was one of the worst things that could ever happen to them, to tell someone they failed as a creationist, an artist? To pull them away from darkness and to show them thanks first, to lead by example, somewhere that allowed me to be myself and help others, somewhere to shine. Dare I say somewhere I belonged? Growing up I was always deprived of my musical and artistic talents, ignored for the most part by a very vain, materialistic mother who used our father’s physical abuse and brutality to enforce upon me and others our self worth measured by appearance, a mother who was more interested in a $40K in ground pool, plastic surgery all over, a 75K vehicle, but never thought about putting the idea in her childrens heads that they could ever be good enough or ever amount up to being worth a college degree and a life well lived. More interested in ridding her face of a wrinkle than anything else, it’s no wonder her children and daughter never dreamed about their feature like they should’ve. Never allowed to play drums or piano (certainly never in the house,) or any other musical instruments on top of the two instruments I fell in love with the most. Which is one very carnal shame, considering my music, my art is and has been the only thing that’s kept me sound and resolute even when things seemed the worst, completely hopeless and lost. And that’s where it starts, the fever, the rage, the feeling of hopelessness that turns good men cruel. I suppose could just go ahead/on and on and talk about how those who call themselves my “family” completely ignored my life getting obliterated in the wake of the wreck and actually preyed on it instead. As it only opened the gates to allow siblings to do and get away with unspeakable things during my trip through the legal and medical meat grinder over the past 5 years. But again, I’ll get into that later and, and would rather the video, the footage that there is, to speak for itself, I can only call it completely and total ennui and or a battery of indignities. College at the time, seemed to keep the negativity off my back for a while but only faintly. Though my classes were 4 days a week, and I had to take a two hour train ride each way to get to and from, so up at 5AM and 6AM every other day to make classes at 10AM and noon, pretty exhausting to say the least. August of 2011, to March of 2012 is when things really started to take a turn for the worst. Ahead of time in early November of 2011, I changed my schedule from 4 days a week to 2, while maintaining the same amount of credits/classes, but for some reason things seemed more difficult At this time I had suspected having cancer, but didn’t actually know it. I had nobody to talk to about it, as the fear fell to the wayside, operating on 3-4 hours of sleep a night for 9 months straight without much food. Though getting into January of 2012, well, this is where the heat really got turned up. As my class was math in the morning, life drawing right after (live nude model drawing) and creating video games immediately after, I was in class from 10AM until 6PM each of these days without a second of a break. I could never really muster up the energy or gumption to pay closer attention to why things seemed to have been getting more difficult for me, in terms of getting by and through classes. I had settled part of my personal injury case 6 months prior for $50,000 of the at fault driver’s insurance policy, but that was to pay for medical bills which were $56,000 and climbing at the time. So I got a large portion of that paid off and was left with close to nothing that was supposed to pay for my hip scope as I proceeded through my own insurance companies underinsured motorist coverage, which was and still is against american family insurance. They refuse to pay out, apparently their defense lawyer who works for them has a notorious reputation for doing this to people who are legitimately and severely injured, and because I can only obtain another 50K which won’t even come close to touching the expense of my hip surgery that’s needed alone, lawyers won’t touch my case. This company claims to advertise heavily on protecting your dreams as a policyholder, when all they’ve done is completely shatter and destroy mine for the sake of profit. Though starting in january of this particular year, my parents and family started upping the ante on the degradation. In january, my parents asked to borrow a thousand dollars to go on vacation in cancun mexico, and said they’d pay me back right after dishing out their interval abuse. Never felt like I had a choice and they never paid me back While they were gone for their 7-10 days the abuse I endured aided in me falling behind in classes when the authority left the house leaving the other siblings to run wild, almost like a campaign of their own was launched to make me as uncomfortable as humanly possible. Later in march, as I struggled to maintain my 4.0 GPA (which ended up a 3.8) I noticed my money had fallen from my computer case shortly before I left for class nearing my finals, and had texted my mom to make sure nobody found it and stole it. Obviously a mistake, but when I got back, an additional $1300 was stolen, and my parents conveniently went on vacation to mexico again shortly after. By the end of March, I knew I couldn’t keep it up, even though I had condensed my schedule down to two days, for some reason it seemed harder like I mentioned before, almost costing me an entire quarter of classes and my grades, plus tuition costs. So I decided to take a break and continue treating for my hip. After I somehow pulled off an A for a grade in my game art and design class which I thank my professor for, Alex Damarjian. I passed out for 17 hours, and when I woke up on March 25th, the day before my birthday, I began looking hip specialists to get the recommended MRA arthrogram to confirm as to if my cartilage was torn or not with a cam lesion. It took forever to get an appointment anywhere, I tried scheduling at RUSH university, but they wouldn’t accept me as a patient unless I gave them all my car insurance money and information, which I obviously couldn’t do. Then, I scheduled at North Shore in Evanston, IL, I refrained from telling them that the reason for my visit was due to an injury from an auto accident because of my experience with trying to schedule with RUSH. Didn’t matter, the doctor ordered the MRA, and a bone scan. Now I had to wait for this, until the first week of july to get the tests done being as it was early june of that year. And I had been trying to rekindle the flame with the love of my life at the time. She always got the best of me, but this time, things were pretty serious. I reached out to her and told her, the first and only at the time, that I thought I might have cancer, nobody in my family would listen, they just balked at me, ostracized me, called me crazy, you name it they did it. So she was kind enough to listen and potentially help when I was impossibly alone, with no support of any kind, extremely troubled and bothered by an abusive family that was not helping the situation and making it worse. Though the abuse spoiled the relationship, and I lost that love again, for a second time. Though the devastation was so, that I further sunk into the belief that I would never amount into anything in this world, something my family/parents had ingrained in me from a young age. I was inexplicably stuck. So what does one do at a time like that? Believe the hate. When you’re told something enough times you believe it, even if it’s something you know isn’t true. You get treated a certain way long enough you become convinced you deserve it, you feel it. That’s what happened to me, so I stopped looking. Things like, “go kill yourself” among much worse and others were all that were echoed my way and still to this day. Right when this happened, it was the first week of July in 2012, I got the results from my hip, and was practically giving up on looking for the cancer I suspected I had. I then got robbed of another thousand dollars cash while on the phone with this particular female, left my keys to my safe out and a younger sibling got to it. That was a rough blow, right after filming earlier that week for a fundraiser I was working on for myself and other students, one of which had cystic fibrosis, and was having to drop out due to medical reasons like myself. The working title for that was “Empathy Vs. Apathy.” After my experience in Chicago, I couldn’t help but notice the abundance of apathy everywhere, and knew something big would have to be done to jar people out of apathy and into action. Though this is the time where things really got bad, from the summer of 2012, to present. So I’ll try my best to recap as I struggle to write this. The same night getting robbed in July, I losing the love of my life again…. I was lost as could be, and then something even more ridiculous happened. My dad seemed to think I had $10,000 that he could ask of me, will never forget this, it never even seemed like a question, moreover a demand in which I had no say. Though I didn’t have that kind of money and actually considered giving it to him, though I didn’t, thank god. Yet later in September right after, they stole the very last of my money and that marked the true beginning of how and why I am in the position I am in today. On september 18th of 2012, he pulled the same stunt at midnight, demanding what money I had left from me ($3200 to my name, that was it) thinking I had more. I told him that was all I had, so he took it anyway, it was to purchase the property under his restaurant to save him an alleged $2500 on overhead/bills every month, and figured if I did, at least he’d be able to pay me back at $1000 a month. It took 3 months for me to learn, that they had no intention of paying me back. I recorded the whole trip to the bank on my phone at the time with my mom in the car, had to go to my safety deposit box to get the cash, and hand it to her, (which will be featured in the video.) This was September 19th, 2012. By January of 2013, I lost my vehicle, later in april I lost my health insurance, and a working cell phone. From Zero…. Things progressively got worse from there, the verbal abuse, the physical abuse, all I would ever hear from siblings was encouragement telling me to go kill myself and later when cancer was a reality to them, “Just die already or leave,” repeatedly (featured in the video yet to come,) threats of physical violence on a very regular basis simply in attempt to provoke me into defending myself physically so that when or if I did, they could turn around and claim to be a victim and oust me onto the street. Their plan all along I came to learn. This went on for years…. and only got worse. I went for 2 and half years looking for ways to obtain money to purchase a vehicle with no success. Nobody would let me use a car consistently enough to remedy the problem let alone eat regularly or get a job. This went on the entire time, I was never allowed to shower, use the bathroom, eat or sleep on any of my own time/schedule. I was left to a dining room floor to sleep on, a broken leather couch, or a toxic storage room where billows of cigarette smoke would flow over the drop ceilings and through the styrene and formaldehyde exposed insulation, along with black mold and radon. So that’s why I chose not to sleep in their toxic substandard space and slept only on floors or a couch that was well…. not any help at all in terms of getting some recuperative sleep. All I did was fall the mercy of the abuse, stolen possessions and belongings, prescription medications from my addict brother and sister as my parents just sat in their bathroom and smoked like chimneys and drank, their nightly vice which is all they ever cared about, and still do to this day. So fast forward to May of 2014. I’ve never felt more lost and defeated in my life. So one day, I wake up to someone in that dining room having closed a window while I slept, I had left it open, probably another stolen amount of prescription drugs, but I had noticed that my lymph nodes in my neck were extremely swollen, my ears were getting just as bad and later worse. So I debated as to whether or not I should go to the hospital with no insurance. I did eventually, and kept getting kicked out after finding out my white blood cell count was over 40,000 points. I was told there after waiting 6 and a half hours in agony in their notoriously awful ER. Found out that a normal count was 1,000. So I knew something was wrong but no doctors were saying anything, literally. It took about 4-5 more visits over the next 3-4 weeks of me getting kicked out and not being admitted because I didn’t have insurance, which I believe I have recorded on video as well as one of the ER doctors states. When they finally mentioned to me in early June that they thought I had leukemia. I was so offended by the suggestion considering they did almost no tests to make such a statement. Completely disarray sets in, I’m told to go to a doctor near by, a hematologist oncologist, who wasn’t available, due to lies from the ER, typical. So I wound up seeing the same doctor who treated my sister for lymphoma as a replacement weeks later. Ironic, two cancers caused by radon radiation in two siblings sleeping in a basement next to the concrete walls. That’s was the immediate thought…. “I knew it.” It was June 16th, 2014 when I got the official diagnosis of cml leukemia, I just sat there, didn’t even flinch and just watched the oncologists face and lips moving with ringing in my ears, hearing nothing, just thinking to myself, “two and a half years of suspecting this and not being able to do a damn thing about it.” As the doctor then proceeds to tell me he thinks I’ve had this a while, and recommends a bone marrow biopsy for staging purposes. The worst part about that day, after missing the previous 3 summers, was it was a beautiful sunny cloudless day, and as I walked out of that building into the parking lot, I just looked up and stared into the blue sky, panned around looking for rays of sunlight. Looking at the green foliage and leaves, it wasn’t the same anymore. The sun didn’t look the same, feel the same, the trees didn’t look the same, nothing was the same anymore, my sunny days were ruined. I tried to tell my family, but they made it about themselves as expected, blaming me for ruining their day/lives with the mere mention of it as if it were them who got diagnosed. Only to later barrade me with disbelief, again calling me crazy, telling me to leave and get out of the house, insulting, belittling me, then later physically attacking me in two instances right near father's day. One right after it and one one the day of. For months until late september and october after being starved for 5 days not being allowed to eat due to my parents not letting me use a vehicle to drive somewhere to eat because they accused me of stealing their drugs. Then another two days a day and half after that, just because I told someone about it. I went untreated, no insurance, nobody would accept me as a patient. I finally acquired some state medicaid insurance in october, and some medication that costs over $11,000 a month came to fight the cancer that was almost in blast crisis. The end stage. I wound up in the hospital that month, October of 2014 for nearly a week getting chemo around the clock no-stop for 4 days straight. My white count was at 186,000. For some reason my body wasn’t reacting to the medication properly and my heart almost stopped while waiting in the ER before being admitted. Shortly after that…. I realized what a vacation it actually was to be away from my abusive family, getting chemo like that in a hospital a vacation? Yes, it was absolutely that bad. From that point forward, I did my best to try and find ways to advance money out on my personal injury case to get a vehicle and live out of a storage unit, triangulate my position near a local gym where I could shower, and try and get back to my life that I had been deprived of for 5 years. But my family caught on and did everything in their power to make my only exit a walk down the street with all I could carry on my back. They poisoned every relationship I had when looking for a place to stay/move out for the past 3-4 years in fear that I might out them for this and tell everyone what was really going on. But as I read while setting up this medical crowdfunding campaign, one of the things I was told I had to do, was either hide as much as possible and risk not having a successful donation campaign, or do what’s most successful and reveal everything, the good, the bad, the ugly, the raw brutal honest truth. They tried to keep me as broke and powerless as possible and they succeeded. Which led to me becoming homeless. Which I thankfully had recorded on video the very incident that caused it, accusing me of stealing their drugs, in which part I had finally had enough of in June, of this year, the first week. Especially when you have an addict younger brother who’s been doing unspeakable things, why they accuse me is beyond comprehension. I hit my limit of the abuse, and called the police. Though what wound up happening was far worse. I was suggested to file for an order of protection against my parents after and when I was carted off to the courthouse to do so the very next day, I finally got in front of the judge who was to either grant or deny my request, refused to look at all my video evidence completely corroborating my story fully. With all my evidence on my computer and hard drives within arms reach of this judge, he refused to look at it, and denied my request and granted my parents one based on lies. Though to clear my name, I made the video evidence public, so no matter what happened in court, the truth would get out which wound up winning the case for me, clearing my name. So I, from that point have been homeless for over a month now, and have until the 17th to secure a vehicle to at least live out of and or establish a network of places to stay and work to some degree otherwise I am homeless, on foot with no money, cancer and injuries that cannot carry me that far on foot. All my possessions have been either stolen, destroyed or looted to some extent or another by my family when being forced to stay away from that house, and am now having to start over from less than Zero. Financially, with no credit, student loans, medical bills nearing $80,000, there’s no way I can get to a point where I could be ready for a bone marrow transplant, the only shot I’m told and I’ve come to learn that is the only chance for a cure I have battling this cancer. Or an experimental treatment that costs $100,000, were genetically mutated viruses like HIV, Measles, Pox, among others are being engineered and programmed to attack and kill only cancer cells only leaving all my healthy cells in-tact would be injected into my body. Only then would I have to survive the fever and wait and see if the treatment worked. So before I end this introduction to my story, I just wanted to leave some things that I’ve learned about humans while searching for 6 words my entire life, “The most basic of human compassions.” Life can be a journey towards purpose and meaning -- if we ask the right questions. As I mention the fact that such a large percentage of students at top-tier schools enter industries that aren’t contributing, creating or improving much of anything saddens me. There are no easy answers to questions of money versus meaning. But I was right to prod and reflect on what we seek from life, to ask these questions, to recognize the importance of passions as well as paychecks. The desire for human connection is universal, it’s not quite love and it’s not quite community; it’s just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together. Who are on your team, even if you don’t know it. We should appreciate the little interesting stuff that life offers us every day. I cry now because I realize more so than usual how short life is, and also so beautiful, it took me 27 years to see this as I lost sight of the person I wanted to be but discovered the man I really am. Though I’m told that there’s no such thing as “too late.” I’ve learned that people are greatly afraid to invest in other people, they’d rather mourn for a dog or a cat, or some animal on TV rather than another human being. Which daunts me and makes me wonder what it will take, what kind of dramatic, true example would it take to jar people out of apathy and into action? It’s hard to watch something you love destroy itself, to see it fall apart, disaster always feels so distant, detached, someone else's struggle in some far away place, it’s not until it’s at our doors and in front of our feet, before ourselves that we realize how fragile we are, all of us, all of this. So when this hit, it came down, it came down hard, and I fell, and buried myself in anger, and fear, in instinct to survive. The real truth is, no one watched, no one wanted to see, tragedy is invisible, people turn away from it, they run from it if they can, and it’s hard knowing one belongs here, that my purpose lies amongst all this pain. But someone’s gotta be there, to pick it up, to push back, put the first piece back together and make the change. I beg and plead and hope with every ounce of my existence that there’s someone out there willing to help. I’m so very tired…. hoping those out there will allow me to rest with whatever alleviation they can provide. I’m fighting the good fight, I’m trying to finish the race, and I’m trying to keep the faith, but what I’ve endured has been beyond demoralizing. My refusal to stay silent After living under the threat of death for over a year now, I speak up because when one sees injustice and just shrugs one's’ shoulder it’s just like promoting it, we live in a society of interdependence in which we must be allies for each other in all social spheres. If one analyzes any prolonged injustice against anyone, one will see that a critical component in its persistence was the silent approval of the unaffected. I will admit it can be very confusing at times to stand up for others, especially when it challenges ideal systems I even at one point in time considered absolute, and or from people I’ve looked up to. But in order to reap the vast benefits of the great diversity around us we must take to heart the sorrows of our fellow human-being and make them our own. All I’ve ever had was my musical influences my musical heroes, my music, my art, my drums, my dreams, my aspirations, my ambitions, my passions that gave me solace to hope…. and one day conquer my roads untraveled, and the hope that one day I’ll be able to live that life guiding me straight and true though the many obstacles in my path, keeping me sound and resolute when all around seemed hopeless and lost. This is my lifes plea…