Aid a Musician's Journey to Recovery and Accessibility

Most of you should know me, or at least who I am, whether it's from bands that I've been in over the last 30 years (some examples include 1000 Yrd Stare, Hudson River Bottom Nightmare Band, Gunther Weezul, and Black Iron Prison) or maybe my sardonic posts or responses on social media, or maybe we used to get really fucked up together back in the 90s! If it was the last possibility, please don't be offended if I don't recall. Most of that decade is a huge blur.

The people who know me best can vouch for the veracity of my tale of woe. I will offer a second apology if I'm coming off somewhat light-hearted.

Self-deprecation is my default setting because it distracts me from the shit show that life has devolved into over the last several years, and as much as I loathe being in a situation where I feel forced to look for outside assistance, I just can't keep my head above water on my own at this point.

So let me set the background here...

Several years ago, my marriage dissolved into chaos. I'm not going to cast aspersions, throw shade, or gaslight my way through this. It happens to the best of us; sometimes shit just stops working, and we move on. In the process, though, I lost my house and was forced to move somewhere that was more affordable despite still barely scraping by.

Then my son passed away on Christmas morning back in 2022. That is hands down the worst thing that I've ever endured.

I destroyed my hip many, many moons ago and ended up having a hip replacement back in 2014. It was supposed to be no big deal. Unfortunately for me, it was the start of a series of events that ended in a way that I never could have prepared for. The chain of events was bizarre at best. In the summer of 2022, the new hip that was supposed to last decades started randomly dislocating. Seven times in 12 months this happened. Something as basic as sitting on the couch and turning to the left to talk to my daughter would pop the acetabulum right out of the socket. I was forced to have a revision of the initial total hip replacement. Not really a big deal. Aside from a few weeks of pain and some PT and OT, it should have been easy.

The very end of August 2022, I went in for the procedure. Everything seemed to go well, and a few days later, around September 1st, I was back home doing everything that I was supposed to per the doctor's orders.

Fate has a funny way of saying, "Fuck you, you're not going to get off that easy!"

Roughly three days after I got home from the hospital, I went to bed, walking. I woke up the following morning, stood up to get a drink and use the bathroom, and promptly fell over on my face. No, I'm not that big of a klutz; my legs were (and still are) paralyzed from the knees down.

Here's where we get to why I'm at a point where I'm sucking up my pride and looking for any extra help that I can get.

I've spent nearly two years in a wheelchair, and I'm barely surviving on SSI. This means that my finances are, on average, less in the course of the entire month than the majority of my friends take home in a week after taxes. I'm not able to save any money at all, let alone enough to move. What this means at the end of the day is that my living situation is entirely unsafe for me as I live in a second-floor apartment that has no handicapped accessibility. The only time I've been out of my house in the last 21 months is when I'm carried down in a stairs chair by an ambulance crew for doctor's appointments or trips to the ER.

In addition, not all of my medical expenses are being covered by insurance. Medication that had a low copay now costs far more than I can afford and doctor's aren't much help on that end.

Another gift I received after the hip revision was not just any staphylococcus aureus infection, but the little brother of MRSA, an MSSA infection. Along with the paralysis, I also still have to this day. I have to cease taking the antibiotics every so often because it's just not healthy for your organs to take them for prolonged periods, let alone a year and a half. As a result of the infection, they ended up having to do several other surgeries on my hip. One was to remove the new titanium implant and replace it with what is referred to as a Ceramic Spacer. What this is, is a facsimile of the titanium implant but made of concrete and coated with antibiotics to aid in getting rid of the Staph/MSSA infection. It didn't work. They had to take that out as well.

So for the last five months, I've had no acetabulum whatsoever in my right hip/femur. Oh... The acetabulum is the ball at the top of your femur that pops into your hip socket and enables bipedalism in our genus.

As a result of the fact that I'm missing a crucial part of my femur and hip joint, I have incredibly limited mobility. I was limited just from the paralysis, but this took things up a notch or three. The long-term effects of these mobility issues have had a profound effect on the tendons in my knees and hips. I'm essentially stuck in a seated position and will need intensive physical therapy to address the problem.

Finally, the most recent addition to my collection of medical issues is that due to what were initially minor injuries to my feet as a result of the lack of sensation in my legs and feet, I was forced to undergo a toe amputation at the beginning of May. I don't seem to be able to catch a break!

It's just very difficult to get out of my apartment because of the limited mobility and insane amount of pain in my right hip.

I've been dealing with this almost exclusively on my own for nearly two years aside from occasional assistance from my 82 year old father.

I have told very few people about what I've been dealing with, and the handful that are aware of my issues have been shielded from the extent of it.

I feel like I can barely function like a human being these days. I've been forced to sell all of my music equipment and recording gear due to financial stresses. The one thing that always got me through the very worst times of my life was always playing music. My bass was as much a part of me as my kids. I don't even have that one sanity-saving outlet anymore.

The only thing that keeps me remotely grounded is my daughter. I just can't do this and be there for her with the extremely limited financial resources that I have access to these days on top of my inability to leave the house. I tried as long as I could but have finally reached a breaking point where I have no other options, so I don't have anything left to lose by trying this route. If anyone is able to offer any assistance at all, you're doing it more for my amazing 17-year-old daughter than for me.

Nonetheless, I thank each and every single person for anything that is within their ability to help with. Between moving costs and medical expenses, I'm buried, so truly, you have no idea how much I appreciate anything. It all helps more than I can express with mere words.