Support Derrick Smith's Recovery Journey

Hello everyone, Derrick Smith, nice to meet you all! I am a father, a husband, and a provider who started my own trucking business and was determined to grow it into a powerhouse trucking company that was going to help other drivers do the same. But all that came to an end on June 6, 2024, at 1:30 pm when a driver of a Transportation Safety road worker made an illegal U-turn on a major highway. I had no way to avoid hitting him, and we collided. Now, I am left with the effects from this accident. I suffered a head injury with a concussion, my lower back has a torn disc in L4-L5, and my neck C5 as well. My right leg was damaged and stays numb and aches nonstop all day and night, needing surgery now on my knee also. I am suffering from PTSD, mental health problems, sleep deprivation, and my ears constantly ring daily, sometimes so hard I have to cover them to ease the pressure, etc. I have no income now because I was just starting my business, and I have depleted my funds I had saved up. I can’t work now because of my health issues. I feel like I am lost, like I have failed my family and myself, and I don’t know how to deal with it. My salary has been robbed from me and the future I was building for my family! Never once did I ever think that this could happen to me because I did everything right; I was always safe, but my safety didn’t mean others would be safe. I am blessed to be alive because this could have been worse as I was hauling a load with hazmat materials that could have exploded! My anxiety now around trucks constantly rises just going to therapy and my doctor appointments. Everything is now on my wife, and she is about to break because she knows how I was as a provider. I always have been that to my family. Now I have been robbed and have nothing to offer to the table! I’m spiraling out of control, and I can’t control it because I lost what we had worked so hard to get! I had purchased a 2024 Freightliner Cascade with contracts now gone! I am just going through a storm, but I know God shall prevail! Amen! My future to drive again may be over as my back, neck, and right leg may not allow me to drive big rigs ever again! My dream stolen in an instance by someone who could’ve waited, but chose to try to beat a semi-truck by doing a U-turn!

funding will pay off built up debt created while driving fuel cost payments, credit cards household bills, medical bills to also help pay for me seeing a therapist to help me get through my PTSD and anxiety The built up Traumatic Stress Relief I’m needing!