If you would like to hear this from me, instead of reading on... see the video below...
I am Bobby Rose. I am creating this campaign for my wife Alisha and our family.
Alisha was injured at work in March of 2021, has since had two spinal surgeries, and currently suffers from completely debilitating migraines. Unfortunately, our journey to getting her well and our family whole is not over, and we desperately need help right now. Worker's Compensation stopped paying Alisha on April 22, 2022, and the law firm handling our claim has not been able to get it started again yet. We are fighting with everything we have to make it through all this, but we are running out of options.
We have already lost so much through this, and now we are weeks away from not having a place to live on top of it. We are struggling to keep food on the table and enough gas in our vehicle for me to get to work every day.
I have been considering creating this fundraiser for a few days, but today helped me make up my mind. You see... Today is Alisha's birthday, and she has been in bed all day with a migraine. The scary part is that we can not afford her migraine medication, and she is almost out.
I am hoping to raise enough to keep us from being homeless... To put some food on the table, and maybe at some point buy my wife a small belated birthday present, until we finish this fight. WE WILL NOT STOP FIGHTING!
During the height of the pandemic, Alisha was working as a delivery driver for Fed-Ex. The number of deliveries the drivers had to make and the weight limit of the items they had to handle on their own increased dramatically during this time. On March 23, 2021, she was sent out in a small cargo van with a king-size bed to deliver due to her box truck being broken down. While attempting to unload the bed, she suffered a severe spinal injury to her L5, which required surgery (a discectomy). The injury was covered under Worker's Compensation, and eventually, they approved the surgery, which she had on June 16, 2021.
The initial surgery went quite well. Alisha woke up and said the pain in her back and leg were gone. She could get up and walk on her own, and it seemed after a few weeks that she was on her way to a full recovery! Then it was time for physical therapy...
Alisha started physical therapy on August 18, 2021, but something did not seem right from the beginning. The exercises and things they had her doing appeared to contradict some of the restrictions the surgeon that did her discectomy had put in place, but she did as she was told, trusting they knew what they were doing.
On September 7, 2021, during physical therapy, they did a new "exercise," using weights on her legs and swinging her hips. Alisha felt a pop in her lower back. Immediately her pain started back in her lower back and leg, and she had weakness in her leg. She came home crying, not knowing what to do. We contacted the neurosurgeon, and he immediately ordered another MRI, which Worker's Compensation fought at first. While waiting for the MRI to be approved, we discovered that the physical therapy clinic had treated Alisha for lower back pain, not post-spinal surgery. Due to this, we got the approval, and finally, on October 5, 2021, she had the second MRI.
The results of the second MRI were a significant gut punch to us. Everything the surgeon did had been undone, and Alisha required a second surgery to repair the damage. She struggled with weakness in her legs, falling, dizziness and more until the surgery was finally approved, which she had on November 30, 2021.
The second surgery did not go ANYTHING like the first.
When Alisha woke up, she was immediately in severe pain. She was not able to get up unassisted from the recovery room bed, and she was crying. I had to help her get into the truck and out at home, and for the next few weeks she required round the clock care. She could not even get up and walk to the restroom by herself and she was having severe muscle spasms at the surgery site.
Eventually after close to a month she began to regain some of her strength and seemed to be healing. It was slower this time, but even the surgeon told us we had to be very careful this go around. Apparently he removed as much of the disc as was possible during the second surgery without having to fuse her vertebrae together.
Due to the muscle spasms and the fact that she had two spinal surgeries so close together, she did not start her second physical therapy until March 1, 2022. This time she went to therapy at the spine clinic where she had her surgery. The therapist was very understanding and knowledgeable and had Alisha doing the proper exercises.
During this time we learned that the surgeon that had done her surgery was preparing to retire. That became apparent soon after that. As her therapy progressed, they began to integrate weight training (carrying hand weights across the room). The hope was, if Alisha could get to 50 pounds, which is the pre-pandemic weight limit needed for her job, that she could go back to work. She was hopeful by this point she would be able to. After all we had been through, and the loss of wages, and all her pain and suffering, it would have been a great end to the story.
Then she got to 50 pounds.
At the end of March, as the weights got heavier, Alisha began to get headaches. Bad ones. On April 2, 2022, she went to our family physician, who told her she had an issue with her neck, and prescribed her Ubrelvy, which is a very powerful and expensive migraine medication.
Alisha made the physical therapist aware of those and they watched it closely but kept the physical therapy going. On April 9, 2022 she tried 50 pounds, she was only able to carry the weights a few feet and had to put them down. Alisha barely made it home that day before the migraine made her bed ridden.
Her surgeon told her at that point that he would order an MRI on her neck but that Worker’s Compensation probably would not cover it. We had to know though so he attempted to order it.
It wasn’t until May 26, 2022 that we were finally able to get an MRI on her neck. That only happened because the surgeon was not trying to help us anymore (he was retiring as was stated earlier, and it became obvious he was doing whatever necessary to get Alisha finished on his end), and Worker’s Compensation had stopped paying her the partial salary she had been getting due to the surgeons inaction. So we ended up at the emergency room when one of her migraines became too severe, and only after they contacted him did he decide to order the MRI.
The MRI showed a bulge in her C-spine.
The surgeon never saw her after the MRI. He had a nurse at his office call to say the paperwork he received showed basically nothing of interest and he was done at that point. He wants Alisha to go have her test showing her level of disability so he can release her and be done.
The issue is, she has not been able to travel on the days we could have gone thus far, as well as the fact that, we have not had the gas money to do so.
As a side note… In June of 2021, I found out I also have a spinal issue that needs surgery. I am waiting to have my spine looked at further until Alisha is ok. I am in pain, but I am making it. It does make things more difficult at times though.
We have lost our home, our reliable transportation, we are about to lose the rental we were able to get…. We have Faith. I would love to give my wonderful wife and our family a bit of hope for her birthday.
Thank you for your consideration… and God Bless