My name is Mikal Amin Lee, and in the middle of March this year, my father, Willie Frank Lee, a retired New Jersey School teacher, went into the hospital for a cut on his foot that hadn't healed in several months and was causing him pain. Six months later, he is an amputee and dangerously close to losing what little he's been able to earn for himself.

That fateful visit to the doctor revealed a viral infection that threatened to become gangrene. In addition, surgeons found that two of his leg's main arteries had closed entirely due to complications from his high blood pressure and diabetes. Over the last six months, he's endured four surgeries that removed all his toes, his foot and his leg to the knee.

Because of the extended stay in a rehab post-acute facility, he exhausted his medicare coverage and, due to a quirk in billing, was taken off his state pension medicare. The medical insurance required by the post-acute facility resulted in him becoming underinsured and accruing several thousands of dollars in medical costs for doctor's visits, medicines and ambulatory transport to and from the hospital for his three dialysis treatments a week.

He has now exhausted his medicare and is being forced to return home and fend for himself along with assistance from his roommate (an eighty-year-old retired teacher) and receive some benefits but still is required to pay 20 percent of his medical bills. We've estimated that his out-of-pocket expenses will balloon to over 10,000 dollars a month with home aid nursing, transport and medicines. The medical costs won't include his regular living expenses (food, rent etc.). We are currently in the process of having him receive Medicaid, but it will take a minimum of three months for the paperwork to be processed. In the interim, I am putting together a campaign to raise 30,000 dollars to stand in the gap until he hopefully is approved for Medicaid.