Hello everyone,

I understand that times are not easy for any of us and that every dollar counts more than ever. I really hoped that I would be able to swing it without having to do something like this, but I am in trouble; and I'm having to practice what I preach and reach out for support when it is much needed.

Between the two surgeries I'd already had this year (both elbows), the fall I suffered (which limited my ability to work for about 2 months), and now with this 3rd surgery I’m having on December 31st (hernia); I'm going to be very hard pressed to be able to afford to pay my bills and to keep myself afloat financially for the next 4 to 5 months while I work on my recovery. My savings are completely tapped and most of my investments are too. I'm creating a GoFundMe to aid in helping with the upcoming expenses of paying the co-pays for Occupational and Physical Therapy, as well as a bit of extra money to help me cover what I will miss out on making while I am healing from my hernia surgery.

So I guess it would be worthwhile to talk a little bit about what has happened and to give a brief timeline of events on here in case there's anybody interested in reading this longer story.

I had been dealing with chronic nerve pain in my arms for about two and a half years and finally in April of 2025 I was blessed to meet a surgeon up at Vanderbilt who was able to diagnose my condition and stated that with two surgeries he could fix me up and have me good to go. So on May 1st of 2025 I had the first of these surgeries which was called a cubital tunnel transposition on my right elbow. I had previously had this surgery done on that same elbow but obviously it did not take, and he was able to diagnose this when previous testing and assessments have failed to do so. I come to find out that this doctor is an expert in these sorts of things and people come from all over to see him and get fixed up. The recovery from my first surgery was very brutal and it was about six or seven weeks before it started to feel even remotely normal. But it did eventually get better and we were able to book my second surgery for July 31st which would be the exact same surgery but on the left elbow which had never been touched before.

However, in between these two surgeries my wife of 11 years sat me down and told me that she did not want to be married to me anymore. I fought hard to save my marriage even in the face of a very difficult recovery from this surgery, but it was much too late and the resulting divorce left me tapped financially and beat up emotionally. Nevertheless, I had my second surgery on July 31st and the recovery from this one was much easier than the previous surgery in May. When I went back for my follow up appointment on August 15th of 2025, I received a glowing report and I was able to tell the surgeon that I felt great and probably didn't need another follow up. He agreed with me and said just go ahead and call me if you need anything.

Well about a week later I suffered a fall. I fell backwards and used my hands to break my fall instinctively, which caused my wrists to hyper-extend and stretched all those nerves that were still healing. Initially my left elbow, which was the one that had been operated on most recently, was the only one that really flared up. My right arm was a little bit sore and it seemed like it got the worst in the fall, but it was my left arm that was especially bad and especially worrisome because it was the most recent one. A week later I went up and saw my surgeon; he checked me out and his initial assessment was that things would probably be fine, and that we were just going to give it some time and see.

Things did not improve in the coming weeks. To make things worse, that following weekend after I saw my surgeon, I was working on some stuff around the house and running errands and heavily relying on my right arm in order to function, so the inevitable happened and I overtaxed my right arm, which was already probably irritated from the fall, and caused it to flare up terribly as well. And so at the end of September I went back up again and got a special kind of ultrasound done on both elbows where they were able to look at the actual health of the nerve. Luckily, they were able to discover that there was no additional damage to the nerves and that there was nothing currently pressing on the nerves that would cause them to have any additional issues like it did before. However, the bad news was that both nerves were significantly swollen and that it was going to take a significant amount of time for them to heal, settle down, and get better.

So for the next two months I was significantly handicapped. I could not drive (and still can’t, my arms are better, but the hernia effects my driving leg and I cannot put enough pressure on the pedals), I could barely hold a mouse, I could barely write, and I had to significantly cut down on the amount that I was working. Now, as a counselor, the good news is that I talk to people for a living and I can stand/sit and talk as long as I need to. However, the problem came when I would try to do my notes. The electronic record system that we use at work is very unintuitive and requires a lot of clicking and copying pasting and things that were just generally difficult for my hands. Luckily, my arms have improved at this point enough to where I’m able to work more and function almost normally at work in terms of getting my notes done. But for those 2 months, my income suffered significantly and I had to dig into the bit of savings I had left after the divorce to keep afloat. There was a double whammy as well: our company runs on a quota system where you have to do a certain amount of sessions in every quarter otherwise you lose your full-time benefits. As a result, I was relinquished to part time status and I lost my company-subsidized health insurance benefits at the end of October in 2025. I was able to get COBRA coverage for the last two months of the year in 2025 (which will luckily cover the cost of my hernia surgery entirely), but I had to go and get a marketplace plan for 2026. It’s not clear at this time when my caseload will be back up to a place where I am making my quota, because that’s all up to how much demand there is. I’ve had a few intakes this December and I’m hoping for many more in the new year. Hopefully they will keep trickling in while I work on getting healthier, and maybe by Q2 or Q3 I can get back on company benefits (a much better plan).

My health “speedbumps” are not done yet, unfortunately. In November, I noticed that I was having some pain in my hip and groin area. I have some off and on issues with that hip so I thought that it might just be my hip going out on me because I have not been able to be as consistent with my stretches as much as I would like to be. So I started being more consistent with gently stretching it, moving it, walking a bit, and doing all the things that I knew that I needed to do but had only just recently gotten back to being able to physically do without it pulling on and hurting my arms. I know it seems weird that doing stuff with my legs and back would irritate my arms, but trust me it did. But as I began to do these things I noticed that the problem was getting worse instead of better. Earlier in December, I was getting out of the shower and I noticed a lump in my groin. Uh Oh. Long story short I did a little bit of Google research and realized that it was likely an inguinal hernia so I immediately called the surgeon that did my hernia surgery 5 1/2 years ago and he was able to get me in within a week. He was able to confirm the diagnosis of an inguinal hernia. That means surgery. So on December 31st I'm going in for my third surgery of the year.

But we can look on the bright side here. Normal healing timeline for this sort of thing is about four to six weeks. And, my plan was to do some significant occupational therapy to make sure my arms were in a good place before I started physical therapy anyway; so I can still do that for about a month or so while I wait on my guts to heal and then I will likely be doing occupational therapy and physical therapy concurrently for several months. By next summer, I will likely be not only functionally stronger than I have been in a long time, but combined with my weight loss this year I will likely be looking at having a level overall health of that I have not had in a LONG time. There is a light at the end of my tunnel!

So here’s the problem. The marketplace health insurance plan sucks. Plain and simple. The copays for Occupational Therapy and Physical Therapy are $75 a session (insane, I know). This is on top of the $500 a month premium I am paying. My insurance will help pay for a maximum 20 sessions of each, and I will definitely need every single one of them. I'm also trying to recoup the money that I'm gonna miss taking a week off work in order to recover from this hernia surgery. Because with my job, I don’t get PTO or sick days! They say that the first week is pretty bad as far as pain goes and then it gets better after that. When I had my last hernia surgery I went back to work after a week so I'm hoping that this will be similar. Especially since it's not like my job requires any heavy physical lifting. Any funds that I receive from this fundraiser will go directly to the following expenses that I will incur over the next few months.

Costs:

Occupational Therapy: $75 x 20 = $1500

Physical Therapy: $75 x 20 = $1500

Missed work fund recuperation for the First week of January while I recover from the hernia surgery: $650 (Considering current client load/demand, this money will go to help me pay my regular bills in January)

Misc. Costs (transportation/ubers to appointments while I can’t drive still, medications, etc): $200

Total: $3850.

If I am able to get anything over my goal, every cent will go towards paying down my Surgery bills from earlier in the year.

I would not be asking for help if I didn't absolutely need it. I really appreciate you taking the time to read through this and I appreciate your consideration right now as I enlist support from my greater support network.

Edit: I rounded up my goal to $4000 To account for the transaction fees that gofundme hits you with. Thank You to everyone who has supported me so far