Hi, I’m David. When I was 20 I developed a constant, severe cough and soon after the diagnosis of asthmatic bronchitis allowed me to get treatment - a diagnosis that took two years despite the fact that I was in medical school at the time - I developed both Crohn’s disease and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Despite all that, I finished medical school and specialized in physical rehabilitation with a subspecialty in spinal cord injuries. On 9/11, I spent ten hours setting up triage for first responders and on 9/12, I signed up with the local volunteer fire department and helped on ambulance calls. I worked as hard as any of my colleagues for years, even after a child accidentally injured my own spine when he jumped off a fence and landed on my back. That was the first herniation, and over the years I have developed at least eight pinched nerves in my lower back. Still I worked. Then one day I woke up with my left elbow swollen to the size of an orange. Soon after, nearly every joint in my body was swollen and painful, with new physical deformities appearing with alarming regularity. This was diagnosed as psoriatic arthritis. To top it all off, I had a tumor removed from my chest about twenty years ago. I’ve been mostly in bed, in severe pain, for the majority of the past decade. I am now on SSD and have managed Medicare, but with all my autoimmune problems very few disease modifying agents are safe - and they are almost $120,000 a year. Just for that one medication. My pain medications also cost almost $2000 a month. Some of this is paid by my insurance, but only after I meet an annual total out of pocket that equals about a quarter of my SSD. I have no family to help me and my friends do try, but I’m still relatively young at 53 and I’m starting to use the money set aside for “old age” - and that wasn’t enough to retire on. I spent my teenage years through early forties helping others, and during these past two Covid years, I’ve even helped out my former patients at my own expense whenever they were hurt but couldn’t risk going to the ER for fear of Covid. Now I need help, but not one soul I helped financially in the past will help at all. They ghosted me the moment I went from caregiver to patient (my own sister stopped talking to me after I told her I couldn’t help support her, her frequently unemployed husband and their children because I am no longer able to work) even though I do not ask for money. My two downstairs neighbors are the only ones who have helped and they mostly drive me to the doctors, pick up my food, and keep me from utter despair. I can’t work - not when I am heavily medicated, in severe pain, fall frequently, sleep irregularly, and must always be close to a bathroom, as Crohn’s disease affects my bowel and the MS has given me urinary dysfunction. This is a terrifying, agonizing life and soon I might face the choice of losing my apartment or giving up entirely. I’ve lost over 35 pounds in the past two months, without dieting or exercise, and the workup has gotten very expensive since my insurer takes my Medicare benefits but denies many of my medications. I hate asking for help. I wish I could be working and continue helping others, but pain, deformity, panic attacks, skin wounds that refuse to heal for over two years… all this and more leaves me afraid of the next part of my body to stop functioning properly, or dislocate, or herniate, or bleed through my shirt and all over my bed. I’ve lost an inch or more in height as my spine becomes increasingly deformed, slowly developing an “S” shaped curvature. Please help me. I don’t have any other options left.