<div>[ started a new fundraiser because an update just wasn't going to cut it for explaining everything that has happened and I don't feel comfortable completely editing the original purpose to this level in the intro either ]
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<div><strong>Background</strong>
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<div>I got Covid early in the Pandemic and never fully recovered. Long Covid subsequently led to diagnosis of persistent cd4 lymphopenia (the same type of immune deficiency seen in hiv/aids) and all sorts of other disabling health issues that continue to this day.
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<div>I became homeless as a result and in 2021 I mustered the last of my strength and built a makeshift camp basically to have a place to die in peace. Then I was able to initiate antivirals and ended up living there for just over 5 years when the city forced me out to make way for FICA parking.
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<div>That's when I planned to rent a room in March of this year which turned out to be the biggest mistake ever.
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<div><strong>Moving In</strong>
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<div>I tried to gloss over this for the months I was stuck living there because it was better than the streets without a camp. When you have nowhere else to go you'll tolerate a lot, and when you've been homeless for long enough you'll tolerate even more.
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<div>Besides - right about then the antiviral I'd been on for over a year started to really do some magic, and I was actually starting to experience what truly "living with" a virus with appropriate management can actually look like. It seemed like this could be a chance to rebuild my life. Except, it was a nightmare.
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<div>There was no running water, the power barely worked, the city was on their ass about the overgrown yard, and the only space in the house big enough to lay a bedroll down was on top of ten years worth of kitty litter in an old utility room they had literally forgotten about.
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<div>One bedroom was piled 3 feet high with plastic soda bottles and had a family of possums living in the rotted mattress on the bed, with a smart tv against the far wall that was still on but unconnected to anything. The other one looked like a thrift store from the seventies vomited. I'm told there was a bed in there but I never found it.
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<div>The room I moved into took weeks to literally shovel the kitty litter out of, during which time I had multiple rats as roommates. They'd been there so long they were damn near tame, not even fearing the cats, and that should have been when I ran for the hills in retrospect.
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<div><strong>The Cleanup</strong>
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<div>Instead I shoveled it out. Then used a concrete trowel to start scraping the years of cat shit from the kitchen floor. Mowed the fukin quarter acre lot with an electric weed whacker - mine, that I'd gotten to keep the area around my tent clear at the camp.
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<div>And then there was the bathroom. With no running water, the toilet was flushed maybe once a week. Obviously that means used TP needs to not be placed in the toilet. But instead of putting it in a bag like normal people would, they'd been just piling it in the bathroom floor. It was nearly to the ceiling when I got there.
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<div>I cleaned that shit up too. Found a bathtub under the mess, which of course didn't work but once cleaned out was a better place than the hallway to take a sponge bath. Got treatment resistant ringworm for my effort.
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<div>We washed dishes in a bucket in the kitchen floor - well, I did anyway, before that they were just reusing dirty shit to cook on and eating off the boxes food came in. I set up my water filter from the camp in the kitchen and was collecting rainwater at one point.
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<div>There was no real food in the house; we went to Kroger every night to get shit for the one meal of the day. There was a dorm size refrigerator but it barely worked and was full of half used cans of dog and cat food. I just went back to using the cooler I had brought from the camp for anything I wanted to keep for the next day. Which brings me to the cost of living in this house of horrors.
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<div><strong>The Expenses</strong>
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<div>Cleaning products for the mess, extension cords to get power from a working plug down the hall, chargers for my phone because the ungrounded power supply kept frying them, rugs for the bare concrete floor in my room that would sweat whenever it rained ... I heavily utilized the local Dollar Tree but it still added up.
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<div>Then the roach infestation in the house finally did in the toaster oven we cooked in (that had never been cleaned from the looks of it.... I tried once but without a working sink or the right products couldn't do much) decided to quit working one day. Now with no way to cook, I used my very small line of credit on a Chime card and bought a microwave for the house.
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<div>Heartguard for the dogs. Allergy meds for one that had lost all its hair. Insect spray for the yard and ground clear to just kill the parts that were waist high bramble vines &amp; poison ivy (because getting into that with no running water would suck).
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<div>Pitching in on food I was afraid to even eat most nights, gas for the jeep every fukin day, bills that were months past due which I got caught up, insurance for said jeep (and fixed the tire, and got AAA in case the damn thing broke down), past due credit cards they'd maxed out for computers and big screen tv's and shit after their folks died....
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<div>It was a house of horrors that was costing me at minimum $60-$75/day and that didn't even account for any of my own needs. And all while basically being relegated to the back yard to escape the incessant maga drumbeat of agitators streaming their actions and spewing hate for everyone at deafening volume from the living room.
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<div><strong>The Final Straw</strong>
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<div>It all came to a head when the single working window unit in the living room crapped out. It was over 100 every day that week, and there was a brand new in the box unit in the back seat of the jeep. But they couldn't be arsed to actually put it in the house.
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<div>Now mind you, I wasn't actually getting cold air in my room at all anyway, but it was tolerable using fans to draw some cool air that direction. At this point my room was unlivable and I was sleeping on a bedroll in the back yard.
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<div>I had a plan lined up with a local friend to pick me and my stuff up, stay at their house until the next day, and then move to another city with another friend when they were coming thru town anyway.
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<div>But as soon as I started packing *my personal belongings,* everything went to hell. I have to gloss over the details for now per my lawyer's advice, but basically I ended up being forced out with nothing but the clothes on my back, my phone (no charger), and my debit card.
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<div><strong>The Aftermath</strong>
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<div>I was without my medication for an entire month, and my health suffered significantly as a result of that cruelty. They knew what they were doing &amp; what little was finally returned to me was dumped out of the duffle bag I had it in, and into a tattered cardboard box.  Then, the third party (who was in violation of a court order THEY requested) decided to smash all my new gear in the mud when I walked away.  
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<div>Hundreds of dollars worth of bedding and clothing were stolen from me, along with hundreds more in tools and camping gear I had brought with me from the camp in the first place. They still have all of it, along with my wheelchair, all of my medical notes for the last six years, and many personal sentimental items as well as all the things I'd bought to make that room livable.
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<div>I've used donations to purchase new essentials from Walmart and Amazon - a sleeping bag, a duffle bag, a few pairs of clothes, a tarp, and of course medications - as well as day to day survival being literally homeless on the sidewalk without a camp and too damn sick to do anything about it. Just like I was in 2021 before I built the camp and got on meds.
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<div><strong>Current Status</strong>
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<div>I was able to retrieve an old wheelchair from the old camp - that's still intact but has security around it now. It barely works but at least makes it easier to carry my gear.
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<div>My health is still in a spiral because of the gap between when side effects of antivirals start to hit and when they actually start to suppress the virus that was already causing major issues.
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<div>My doctor wants me to get full lab panels to see what all is really going on (I did resort to some old school methods that could have screwed with platelets and stuff to try to not die when I had nothing else).
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<div>But I can't afford that right now. I am barely making it day to day. Cognitive function has noticeably declined, I'm short of breath and covered in weird rashes and my hair is falling out again.
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<div>I somehow survived Bertha under a makeshift tarp shelter (shoutout to the veterans that helped pull that off). But now we're dealing with 110+ heat 24/7 and I have nowhere to be and my body desperately needs rest but I have to move around all day and can only actually lay down a few hours a night if I'm lucky.
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<div>I just don't want to fukin die like this ok? I fought this damn battle for six years, have done every level of crazy thing in desperation to try to survive AND I WOULDA MADE IT if this hadn't all happened.
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<div>I just want to live. But honestly, right now, I wish we had MAiD.
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Anonymous

Lesley Jacobs

Just $560 to go!
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Its a Froggy Life

Just $560$ to go! Make an impact.

Its a Froggy Life

Just $560 to go!
Make an impact.