Help Raise Enough Money to Cover Lawyer Fees!

Hi! I'm trying to raise enough money to hire a lawyer to sue UCLA for medical malpractice!

For context, I was diagnosed with Idiopathic Rheumatoid Arthritis at age 3, and have been living with this chronic condition, as well as a few others, since I was a child. For a long time, systemic medications prescribed by UCLA rheumatologists were able to suppress the symptoms so that I wasn't always living in pain, but all of that changed in February of last year.

In February of 2024, I had a blood test for clinical labs that came back as positive for exposure to Tuberculosis. UCLA did not notify me of the test result, so I never went back to get my labs redone to confirm or deny that I had Tuberculosis.

Fast forward to October of 2024, I began feeling horrible pain in my pelvic region and was admitted into the emergency room at St. John's Hospital, I had to go into emergency surgery so the doctors could figure out what was wrong. I was then told they had found a large orange-sized mass attached to my bowel and small intestine and that hundreds of small nodules full of mystery bacteria were spread out all through my bloodstream, stomach, lungs, and a few other organs.

When this mystery substance was tested, it was discovered that I have disseminated Tuberculosis, and have had it for months going unnoticed as it destroyed my body and immune system. I spent 3 days in that hospital before I was transferred to the UCLA Santa Monica Hospital, where I spent another 2 days before being transferred once more to the UCLA Ronal Raegan Hospital.

I then spent 30 days in Ronald Raegan Hospital, where I was put in emergency isolation and forced to quit my college fall semester, turn down a job opportunity, and be completely alone, locked away from my friends and family until I was cleared to leave the hospital. I had to undergo a spinal tap twice, once blind and the second with anesthesia only after I begged for it as the blind spinal tap failed. I was forced to spend my 19th birthday alone in isolation on a hospital bed. After the spinal taps and some more CT and US scans, it was discovered that the Tuberculosis had spread to my brain.

The treatment for Tuberculosis has been long and draining. I've been pumped and fed with harsh steroids and antibiotics for about 6 months, and am expected to stay on the antibiotics for at least another 6 months. The systemic medications that I was given for my rheumatoid arthritis had damaged my immune system enough to the point where the Tuberculosis was allowed to spread throughout my body in asymptomatic silence. Had it been caught back in February as it should have been, my systematic medication treatment would have been immediately halted so that the Tuberculosis could have been treated sooner and not as harshly.

As a result of the antibiotics, my systemic medications for rheumatoid arthritis and uveitis were brought to a screeching halt, and now my chronic conditions have come back stronger than ever. I had to go into another emergency tube shunt surgery because my uveitis had caused my ocular pressure to grow so high that I could have lost my left eye entirely. I was forced to quit my job and have not been able to go back to living a normal life since I got out of the hospital in October. Every day has been a struggle to get out of bed and go outside without feeling my joints crack, pop, and ache whenever I bend a knee, stretch out my elbow, or make a fist with my hand.

The amount of physical and mental anguish I have been forced to undergo because UCLA and its system failed me is not acceptable. I have been contacting law firm after law firm, and none have said they can or would like to help me.

I'm now reaching out to the public, because I'm afraid that if I don't say something now, then what happened to me could very well end up happening to someone else, or worse. My ultimate goal is to create and establish a law that forces doctors to request quarter-yearly labs for patients on immunosuppressive medications so that things like this are caught sooner.

Whether you donate $10 or $0.10, I just want those who take the time to hear my story to know that I am thankful for you blessing me with your thoughts and prayers.