Summary:

Friends of George Papadimatos are using my GoFundMe account to help George help his best friend.

George was taking his best friend for repeated treatments on what was thought to be a strained back muscle.

She was apparently misdiagnosed, and it turned out she had a cancerous mass that was compressed against her spine.

She was in the hospital for 2 months and then transferred to a rehabilitation facility where she still needs intense care.

Detailed Version:

Why you haven't heard from George Papadimatos...and what happened to his best friend...

This goes out to everybody that’s a friend of George Papadimatos.

First of all, George is fine, but he hasn’t been available for months.

His best friend in the world for over 35 years (who doesn’t like social media attention) has been struck with an incredibly serious medical condition.

About 3 months ago, George was taking his friend for repeated treatments on what was thought to be a strained back muscle from lifting something heavy. Upon coming home and getting out of the car, her legs went numb and buckled, and she suddenly couldn’t stand. George caught her and immediately rushed her to the nearby ER.

She was apparently misdiagnosed, and it turned out she had a cancerous mass that was compressed against her spine and required immediate, emergency spinal surgery. She also developed paralyzed vocal cords from this and couldn’t speak at all.

Since then, she was in the hospital for 2 months until last month, when she was transferred to a rehabilitation facility where she still needs intense care to try to heal her wounds and get her to walk.

Imagine being completely independent, strong, healthy, fit, and athletic your entire life and then suddenly one day, you aren’t able to walk or even TALK.

What made the situation more serious than it had to be...

Unfortunately, due to incompetent negligence at the first hospital, she’s suffered more needless and ridiculously painful injuries (especially with her unable to speak and tell them they were hurting her when George and family weren’t around), which set her recovery back.

Also, because of an unfortunate shortage of local family and friends that are unable to be around her at this given time (due to their own health difficulties and circumstances) to help on a regular or even semi-regular basis, George has told me the medical recovery of his best friend is now his #1 priority, and he’s taken it upon himself to drop everything in his life and do anything and everything humanly possible to protect her from any more negligent mishaps that seem to occur with the absence of family/friends around to make sure she’s taken care of properly and with the extremely gentle care she needs.

It’s literally taken seconds for a few new caretakers to come in, not even acknowledge her or understand her situation, and move her in an incorrect way without her consent, causing her extreme and unnecessary pain when George wasn’t there. It’s absolutely frightening.

We all know how important it is for family and friends to be with loved ones in serious condition at hospitals because unfortunately, major mistakes can and often do happen if patients are left alone for too long.

All the unnecessary setbacks not only have made her recovery take much longer (she’s been bedridden for 3 months), her medical insurance has now run out to keep her in the rehabilitation facility.

How George has tried to provide continual and persistent support to his best friend...and has helped so many friends.

George has been with her every day, almost 24/7 for months - many nights even sleeping overnight when coverage is short-handed and taking care of all her needs and most importantly, keeping her spirit lifted and doing all he can to help get her through this incredibly traumatic ordeal. His efforts have been superhuman and almost Herculean on behalf of his friend that he loves more than anything on this planet.

He has booked out of his acting career, taken an indefinite leave of absence from his regular job, and his dream TV sitcom project, “Jimmy's and Jenny's” - which George worked so hard on and was building momentum with his successful premiere and award-winning festivals that he pushed by himself - also has to be indefinitely set aside since no one else on his team has been available to help fill that void in advancing the project.

Her voice has now thankfully improved a little to a loud whisper, but she still has possibly months to go before she can go home and her and her family need a lot of help to cover her new medical bills, treatments, and expenses until she recovers.

Her family is very old and retired, and they don’t have nearly enough for her. It costs over $14,000 a month just to stay in the rehabilitation facility, plus whatever scans, tests, and treatments she’ll need. We don’t know how many months she will need, and she’s too young to qualify for government assistance. The family is trying to see what other programs can assist in any way, but this all takes time that her and her family don’t have.

Why it comes naturally for us to make a big, passionate, and urgent appeal to you all

George does everything with extreme passion and has either physically or mentally helped so many people in his life, including myself. His heart is huge and goes for miles. He even reached out to over 1,000 friends in 4 days and helped raise $120,000 for a friend’s niece that lost her leg just a few months ago. He never even met their family. They couldn’t believe he did this for them.

We’ve never seen anyone put in the time and effort to help others the way George has, and now all his energy is being used to be there for his best friend, and he doesn’t have time to try to raise money or do anything else. When he’s not physically helping her, he’s driving to get her whatever she needs, spending hours on the phone with lawyers, insurance companies, doctors, health facilities, and any other social services that may be able to help, getting her good food, doing her laundry, I mean everything.

He’s literally doing the work of an entire team of people by himself.

We really want to do something to help by starting this GoFundMe to help him help his best friend get through this.

We’re trying to raise as much as we can, and every dollar of it will go towards helping her and her family pay for the rehabilitation facility and all her necessary medical expenses.

George’s friend is one of the most caring, giving, and sweetest persons we have ever met. She has done nothing but work hard and help people her entire life.

George credits her for always inspiring him to be a better person and the best that he can be. She means the world to him, and he said he wants to try to get her whatever she needs to heal. She deserves it. There’s nothing more important to him than this.

We told George we wanted to send this out and appeal to all of you to find it in your heart to make some kind of donation and also share this and help this go viral. You all know George is an old-school, old-soul nice guy who'd give the shirt off his back. We hope you can all pay it forward as he tries to help his cherished friend.

We hope you feel as lucky as we do that George is in all our lives.

Thank you for reading this.

Roberto Ragone

Vanessa Bontea

Angelo Mercado