Help a student recover from a work accident

Hi everyone, my name is Anna Potapova, and I am starting this fund raiser on behalf of my close friend (due to privacy reasons, I cannot disclose her name or the name of the school) who is an international Ph.D. student at a state university. My friend was injured while doing her Ph.D. research and unfortunately has incurred numerous medical bills and loss of income that have not been covered by the school or workers insurance and has had her stipend cut because she cannot work.

My friend is a young lady who is passionate about environmental issues and is pursuing her degree in Environmental Engineering with hopes of making the world a better place. She just wants to heal and to move forward with her life, but due to circumstances beyond her control her healing has taken a long time and has been expensive.

In July of 2020, my friend was working on her research making environmental measurements in a mobile van at an industrial site on campus. She was not provided with personal protective equipment such as safety vest or hard hat, neither was she safety trained. When she was walking from the van to the parking lot, she was hit by a front-end loader that was backing up and did not see her. As a result, she got her lower back and hip injured.

After her accident she went to the student health center, where she received a general examination but was not taken an x-ray or MRI. When her pain persisted, she repeatedly contacted her doctor and after several weeks the doctor finally conducted x-rays of her hip and lower back to exclude a fracture. He eventually prescribed physical therapy which she did for 5 months. Her doctor told her she just had a trauma and muscle strains, and her situation was improving. The doctor wanted to close her Labor and Industries (L&I) case, but her physical therapist did not see much improvement and recommended her going to see a spinal specialist out of town. At the spinal specialist clinic, she had her first MRI, and the doctor diagnosed her need for hip surgery as well as urgent spine injury non-surgical treatment. The spinal specialist worked on her back while she waited to find a hip surgeon and get L&I approval for the surgery.

This whole process has been financially very difficult for my friend. As an international student, before the accident she could only work part time. Constant pain and the necessity for regular medical treatments forced my friend to cut her work hours by half for several months. Since her hip surgery in April this year she has not been able to work. Navigating the confusing health care system and insurance has been a constant battle. The absence of a proper timely treatment caused an injury in her foot in addition to existing injuries. There have been numerous issues with getting monthly pays for this difficult period due to communication issues between L&I and the university. As a result, many medical and short-term disability bills as well as accommodation related to medical treatments in other cities were not covered, which put my friend in a very bad financial situation. She had to pay for staying in a hotel near the spinal clinic because she could not commute for 3.5 hours to get her back treatments.

Currently my friend is undergoing physical therapy to get back to walking. She had to stay with a friend because she could not take care of herself. She is on the road to recovering. There is no definite prediction on how long it might take until she can walk without crutches and pain again. It is very disturbing to see a person very close to me being trapped in this situation and not getting the required help. It isn’t fair that my friend through no fault of her own was injured in a work accident and now is struggling with large medical bills and is also struggling to finish her degree.

Can you help to take some of the financial burden off my friend and help her heal?

Your financial support will help my friend get back on her feet and is greatly appreciated. The money will go to the following bills that she currently has and will have in the future: tuition, medical bills, hotel, accommodation for surgery, flight tickets for surgery and medical insurance.

Thank you so much for supporting this campaign, it means so much to me and my friend!