Help Me Get Back on My Feet!

Hello! My name is Elsa, or my friends call me Fig too. I'm a fiber artist and full-time caretaker for my elderly parents in their 70's. I work a screen printing job on the weekdays between doctor's appointments for them, and vend my fiber arts at art markets on Saturdays during about 8 months of the year to help make ends meet.

In January of this year, I tripped on a loose cord and caught myself on the big toe of my right foot. After immediate urgent care treatment led to a misdiagnosis, a second doctor also misdiagnosed and didn’t administer proper care, finally leading me to seeing an orthopedic specialist all the way in August that determined there was severe damage only repairable with surgery.

Within the first appointment with this specialist, it was immediately apparent to them that I should have been put in a boot back all the way back in January because injuries to a ligament don't just "go away" like I was told it would by the first doctor who had downplayed both the severity of the injury and completely disregarded the amount of pain I said I was in. Their instruction to just grin and bear it with OTC painkillers had caused an incredible amount of damage to my foot due to the hyperextended/loose ligament leaving me walking on grinding bones that weren't being held in their proper positions.

An MRI scheduled two weeks after in September confirmed the route needed to repair this damage. On October 19th, I will be getting a surgery to repair/shorten the stretched ligament and completely removing a now loose bone in my foot that had been shifted out of place and grinding down into the nerves there while I (gingerly) walked on it for several months in that state. This surgery will have me bedridden for one month, and unable to walk without a medical scooter or wheelchair for an additional 4+ weeks in addition to physical therapy.

The state of Alabama has no financial or unemployment assistance for personal injury, leaving anybody who is out of work or finds themselves disabled at any time to helplessly fend for themselves. As the caretaker of my parents who both physically and legally can't work enough to cover the bills on their own, this puts us in a very difficult situation of figuring out how to cover my portion of the necessary bills for roughly two months in addition to funding the surgery in the first place. Unfortunately, I haven't met my deductible for this year which brings the copay alone to $500. For the rest of this surgery to be covered by insurance, I will need to pay the remaining $3496.04 out-of-pocket. That price is the surgery alone, which does not include the recovery and physical therapy that I will have to update the goal here for when I find out more information post-op. My bills average around $475-$500/mo. for those two months, and I've rounded up the overall total to include coverage for fees and enough money to help with food and gas for the people helping me.

Knowing I need to be the one asking for help this time has been difficult to come to terms with. I tend to put other's needs before my own and never thought I'd be in a position where I had no choice but to turn that care towards myself accept the same help I've given to my loved ones. I've scheduled countless surgeries and medical procedures for my parents at their age and I'd being lying if I said seeing my own name this time on the medical paperwork didn't shock me. Any help at all to reach this goal just to cover the essentials would mean more to me than you could ever possibly imagine, and help me recover without the fear of me and my family not being able to get by. If you would like to contribute and want something in return, my Instagram @lordpineappledoodles will have my remaining market schedule available to purchase crochet plushies, apparel, art prints, stickers, and more. Thank you so much if you've made it this far.