Those of you who have known me for so many years know that it is not easy for me to ask for help. But these last few months. That's all I've been doing it seems. Only because I really need it.

If you don't know the story already, the video up top should help a little bit.

Basically in March of 2025 I was diagnosed with bilateral end stage osteoarthritis in the hips. Normally, although this was painful, it would not prevent you from walking and continuing to work.

Although I live in Florida, I usually bartend And sell my hot sauce during Winters in Florida and then in the summertime I try to go somewhere else around the country to tend bar. It's a great way to see other parts of the country while still earning a paycheck.

This summer I chose the Adirondacks in upstate New York. On the drive up from Florida I noticed my legs starting to get to get a little bit weaker. Then after I arrived at my new job within 2 or 3 weeks I went from working a full shift at the bar plus walking 3 mi a day to not being able to walk at all or even get out of bed.

This is unrelated to the osteoarthritis as far as they know.

While I still could walk a little bit I got in my car and drove to my nearest relative which is my sister Angie in Kingston, New York.

After just a couple days there I could no longer get out of bed and called the ambulance on myself.

A MRI was done in my lower back and some spinal stenosis was found. They thought maybe this was the cause of my not being able to walk.

They did the surgery on August 25th and though nothing went wrong in the surgery, it did not work at all as far as solving my problems. It was not the cause.

During all this time, by the way I was in a glorified nursing home except for short times when I went into the hospital. But I was unable due to my condition to go to my sister's house or anywhere else. So basically I have been bedridden since July 18th.

Directly after the back surgery they put me in the hospital's acute rehab center. This is a separate part of the hospital than I was already in and is very well thought of in the area. But unfortunately after 30 full days rehab I was not better and instead was worse.

Unfortunately I ran out of acute rehab days with my insurance so I had to transfer back to the nursing home / subacute rehab where there's not much to be done for me other than pain management while I'm there.

While there I did schedule my first hip replacement for October 20th back in the hospital.

When they tried to transfer me from my stretcher to the OR table the surgeon felt I was in too much pain to do the surgery even with the anesthesia. So he canceled it and admitted me for further study.

They have done several more MRI s now and one of those MRIs showed abnormal inflammation in the muscles surrounding the hips. They took a biopsy of those muscles to send away to a lab to be analyzed. That lab takes 10 business days to get results from.

That's what we're waiting on now.

They think that it may be a disease called myositis which is where the muscles become very inflamed as the immune system thinks for some reason that they are invading cells and tries to destroy them.

There is no real cure for it if that's what it is, but there is treatment with variant degrees of successfulness. And basically that includes heavy steroids and rehab.

They have started the steroids already in anticipation of what they think they will find.

My biggest problem right now is that my days for even subacute rehab / nursing home are expiring now.

And we have no idea what we're going to do when that happens since I cannot go to my sister's as her house is not set up for someone in my condition. Lots of stairs etc.

- I no longer have an apartment in Florida.

- My car has been repossessed.

- I have no income coming in at the moment of any kind.

- my rehab benefits for my insurance do not reset until January 1st.

- we are trying to figure out the possibility of Medicaid in New York state, but that is complicated since I am a resident of Florida. And also because Medicaid would require me to cancel my private insurance before I apply for it. And other than the rehab benefits running out until January 1st, it is a very good insurance. purchased through the marketplace.

The money I raise in this fundraiser will be used for a variety of things including regular monthly bills that still exist, like credit card payments etc whatever bridge insurance I might be able to get to get me through to January 1st if I can't figure out the Medicaid thing. And also possibly a little bit left over If/ when I get through this to start life over again. To put down a down payment on a used car, first last security on an apartment etc. assuming there's a little bit left for that.

Thank you so much for everybody that has helped out so far all right. I really appreciate it more than you know.

Andy