Sandy Needs Your Help: Medical Challenges

Hi, my name is Sandy Talbott. For those who don’t know me that well, I work as a stagehand. In late February, I had an accident at work and fractured my right foot in two places. I was lucky enough to get worker’s comp checks until the place where I was injured decided to have me participate in a program called ReEmployAbility. This is a program where the venue that I was injured at pays wages for doing light-duty work. They chose for me to work at the Salvation Army.

The problem is that my health issues coincided with my starting at the Salvation Army. Two hours into working there, I had my first panic attack ever. If you’ve never had one, it feels like your world is crashing in, your heart races, you can’t regulate your breathing, you experience extreme nausea, and your hands freeze up. I went to the hospital, and they said it must be nerves from starting a new job. I thought it was strange because I didn’t feel overly anxious. A week into working, I had another panic attack, this time at home. I went back to the hospital (Veteran’s Administration). This time, the doctors decided to do a CAT scan to determine why I was so sick and having severe stomach pain. They found a kidney infarction, blood clots coming from somewhere sitting on a kidney. They determined the panic attacks were my body's way of telling me that something was wrong. I spent a week in the hospital, followed by two weeks off, determined by my doctor for rest and running more tests to find out where the blood clots are coming from.

In the meantime, I haven’t been paid for three weeks because I couldn’t work. I’m not sure what’s ahead because they still haven’t determined the source of the blood clots and I have stomach pain almost daily. I sure could use some financial help to pay bills, anything would help. Thank you!