Support Ivan as he rebuilds his life and avoid homelessness!

When I was in middle school, I was in a car accident that caused compression fractures in my lower lumbar vertebrae. Then those injuries were amplified by the severe physical abuse my mother's now ex-husband would inflict on me. Literal beatings and assaults, which escalated to later full-on fights because I would defend myself, led to injuries that accelerated the spinal damage, and I suffer from Degenerative Disk Disease and Spinal Stenosis, and it triggered the onset of Ankylosing Spondylosis. Repeated punches to the chest as a child led to Blunt Cardiac Injury, resulting in myocardial scarring, pericardial scarring, and wall motion abnormalities. I suffer from arrhythmias and reduced cardiac output. I am 30 now, but for the last few years, I’ve been seeing specialists that normally only see people at advanced ages: a cardiologist and multiple orthopedic surgeons. I have also been with a sports medicine specialist. I’ve had to get MRIs, echocardiograms, CT scans, and even wear a heart monitor for a month because what I was going through were things that they saw in people two to three times my age.

All this to say is that it’s made life very difficult for me because I want to be a very active and mobile human being, and the job I want to do requires it. I work in film. I went to film school. I’m a cinematographer by trade. But I love when I can work on that, whether it’s as a PA, a gaffer, or a grip. But either way, all those jobs require standing up and moving around with heavy objects, sometimes just straight-up heavy weights. And it’s been extremely detrimental to my professional pursuits to try to work in spite of my physical condition. Pain doctors give me epidurals, muscle relaxers, and various pain medications and nerve pain medications. But a cocktail of drugs renders me pretty useless and not in the proper physical state for what’s needed on a film set. Operating without them is very painful and difficult while working, and it leads to very painful and needed recovery after, making 12-hour days on my feet—while mentally and emotionally rewarding—very physically taxing. I suffer from severe muscle spasms that wake me up in the middle of the night. Sometimes the inability to really move means I have to stay in bed because my spine just won’t let me move. The sciatica, the “lumbago” for you oldies, the muscle spasms, the combined misalignment and imbalance, and my muscles lead to overall physical pain across my entire body.

Needless to say, it’s hard to find consistent work when sometimes I can only work two or three days in a row and then I have to take almost a week off before I can work again. So in film, you can’t really just do that and get consistent work, and I would fight through that anyway; it’s just that there aren’t as many jobs right now either. But when they do come up, I’m not always at the first of the list because I’m somebody who can’t commit to being on a call sheet for maybe a week straight. And I’ve only been trained to do that. Sitting is just as terrible on my body and my back as standing and moving, and arguably is probably worse because at least I can build some type of endurance and stamina.

But either way, when I apply for jobs that would require me to either work in an office or from home, I’m not really qualified to do that because I specifically spent my time training and learning to work on film sets.

So right now, I just don’t know what to do because, aside from the occasional callbacks and the occasional background work, I can’t find consistent, regular work.

All this led to the real-world implications of me not being able to financially survive some of the hardships that I came to experience.

I was evicted at the beginning of 2025 after a long court battle with my previous landlord. I was successful in getting the financial judgment dismissed; however, the judge granted them possession of their property, and I wasn’t allowed to renew a new lease (which wouldn’t have been in my best interest since one of the main reasons that the financial judgment was dismissed was because of the condition of the apartment that the landlord was responsible for, and I couldn’t afford to do the repairs on my own to give me superior grounds for possession).

And after all that, I just didn’t have any money, not a lot of savings, and not a lot left to be able to even get into a new apartment.

So I’ve been drifting around, doing gig work and surviving off of the previous donations as long as and whenever possible, trying my best to live, sometimes week to week, in motels, Airbnbs, and Craigslist arrangements. But nothing permanent and nothing to secure consistent, reliable, adequate housing.

Donating will help me find a disability lawyer and settle down someplace. It will help me afford basic food. Throughout that process, I want to be able to find some type of side work that could be allowed for someone seeking disability, and staying in one place allows me to follow a more consistent treatment plan.

I would love to say that donating could help me get on my feet and start a business—you know, maybe as a filmmaker or something—but that’s not realistic, I think. I believe the most important thing is to be able to properly get put into the system and get disability so I can get my health issues managed while receiving proper, consistent medical care and treatment to improve my prognosis. That’s all I have for now. Thank you so much if you made it this far!