Nurses with Disabilities-Help us Save Gabriel

My son Gabriel is one of the most hardworking, dedicated and self-conscious person I’ve had the joy of knowing and raising. After battling a sudden and unexpected case of manic, bipolar and depressive episodes in 2011, he worked on himself and thought about where he wanted to go in life. He decided to enroll in a Nursing Program at our local community college in the hopes of helping others. You can see just how excited he was in his various Facebook posts,  chronicling his journey from taking his last Nursing school test to get his first job with his new license. And he worked himself to the bone since landing that first job in 2016 until June of this year, when he started experiencing manic episodes again. 

Except this time, they had seemed to triple in intensity—and danger. Because he is no longer a minor like he was in 2011, I was not able to get him the help and assistance he needed without his consent. Because of this, my son was left to his own devices, and in what he believed to be a clear state of mind, blew all of his savings on 4 new cars, including a $53,000 on a Corvette, as well as maxing out all of the credit cards he worked tirelessly to earn on extravagant jewelry and clothes, things he used to deem too frivolous to spend money on. Gabriel used to be the most frugal of all my family members, trying to save wherever he could, only for his mental disability to ruin years of hard work and saving in the matter of a month. He has now been reduced to a impulsive spender, asking everyone he knows for money, going as far to ask his own sister , whose tuition he generously helped pay for, for $1500 . 

However, most of this could have been avoided if mental health was taken more seriously. I tried multiple times to get court orders to get him help, but as an adult he had the right to refuse help. We eventually were granted Section 35, which ordered him to be admitted into a drug and alcoholism rehabilitation center, which he easily broke out of because that was not the right place for him. Today, we went to court and he was ordered to spend 30 days in a hospital for the Criminally Insane because of an altercation with the police due to his mental disability. Before this, it seemed that no one cared what happened to my son, and now it seems that only care because he scared some police officers. This, about a man who had never had a criminal record. And will unfortunately be plagued by these actions he’s taken when not in the right state of mind for the rest of his life. 

Not only am I making this gofundme to help make sure that we can help pay his bills and maintain the credit he worked for, we are also making it because the systems set in place for these kind of situations have not worked in our favor. We had applied for SunLife, an monthly insurance my son paid to assure that if he were ever to become disabled, as he is now, he would receive short-term compensation to keep him afloat. I’ve personally submitted all of the forms they asked for, and we have yet to hear back from them for over a month. 

My son used his hard earned money to make sure that if he ever got sick again he would would not lose everything, but unfortunately it seems like he has. The insurance company has done very little to help, even though he payed them to. We are asking for help as a last resort, as we have expended all other outlets. 

Sincerely,
Johanny Reynoso— A very scared yet endlessly dedicated mother still doing her best to take care of her kids.