My name is Richard. I own a small comic shop in Lancaster, California, and I'm betting everything I have on one last shot to get my life back.

I opened Horizon Comics the same week COVID started. What was supposed to be a dream come true became one of the hardest things I've ever survived. But I didn't quit. I worked the shop during the day and drove two hours each way to work as an electrician starting at 5am, then came straight back to run the store late into the night. I took out loans. I sold pieces of my collection just to keep the lights on. I refused to give up on something I loved.

Then in 2020, I fell asleep at the wheel.

The accident fractured my spine, my C7 T1 vertebrae. What made it worse is that nobody caught it for two months. Two months of living in unbearable pain, still working, still pushing, still pretending I was okay. When they finally found it, I was rushed into emergency surgery. They told me if I had slipped, I would have been paralyzed.

The bone healed. But the pain never left.

Since then I've done everything the right way.

Medications. Physical therapy. Injections. A second surgery to remove hardware they thought was causing the pain. A third surgery on my lower spine. After all of it I felt worse, not better. The only answer the system gave me was manage it. More pills. No real solution. I currently take 15 different medications every single day just to function.

Nobody tells you what it does to your mind when your body hurts every single day with no end in sight.

I used to judge people like Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington. I thought they took the easy way out. These past six years humbled me in ways I can't fully describe. I understand now in a way I never wanted to understand. Chronic pain doesn't just break your body. It breaks your mind. It almost broke my marriage. It's taken everything from me while I stood behind a counter smiling because that's what you do.

I'm done pretending I'm okay.

I fought the system the right way too.

I filed for disability. I fought that case for three years. I went in front of a judge with a legitimate claim and they agreed I was broken, but I can be a traffic camera operator. There's 2000 jobs in the U.S, go find one. That denial was one of the darkest days of my life.

But I'm not a quitter.

After everything, the surgeries, the pills, the system failing me; I found something that gives me real hope. Stem cell treatment. I've done the research. I've talked to the doctors. I'm already a candidate. This is not a last resort born out of desperation. This is a calculated bet on myself made by someone who has exhausted every other option the system offered.

I'm calling this campaign All In On Me.

Here's what I'm doing to fund this myself.

I'm selling everything I own. My personal comic collection, books I've spent years hunting down, books that mean everything to me as a collector, gone. Inventory from the shop. Everything. Because I know if I get healthy I'll rebuild. I've been broke before. Me and my wife once sold our Sopranos DVDs to pay the bills. We rebuilt then. I'll rebuild again.

But I can't get there alone.

The treatment, aftercare, travel, and recovery losses total approximately $100,000. I'm working to raise as much of that myself through selling everything I have. Whatever I can't cover is what I'm asking this community to help with.

If you can donate, I'm grateful beyond words.

If you can't, sharing this costs nothing and means everything. Every share gets this story in front of someone who might need to hear it, because I know I'm not the only one living like this. There are millions of chronic pain patients in America being handed pills and told to manage it. Being made to feel like drug addicts for needing medicine to function. Being denied by a system that sees them as a number.

If this story resonates with you, share it. Not just for me, for everyone fighting the same battle in silence.

I've spent six years serving this community.

I've given everything I had to this shop, this hobby, and the people who walked through my doors. Now I'm asking for something back, not out of weakness, but because for the first time in six years I can see a way forward.

This treatment won't just help my pain. It'll give me back the person I was, the one who had ambitions and wanted to take over the world. I've been fighting to stay alive. I'm ready to start fighting to actually live.

All In On Me.

— Richard