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Unstoppable Papa

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This is my Papa.

One of the most hardworking men I know. He loves spending time playing with his great grandchildren (he has five), working on his car, playing his blues guitar, and working miracles around the house with a little elbow grease and duct tape. This man is unstoppable. Or, at least he used to be.

Over the past few weeks, my Papa was raced to the ER due to pain in his neck and back. Papa didn't even take aspirin for headaches, so when he said he was hurting, he was HURTING. 

The doctors found splaying in his spinal cord where vertebrae had started to slice into it, more than likely a result of when he worked himself hard on the GM assembly line for decades. They said my Papa had been in severe pain for around a decade, suffering in silence rather than worrying his family and incurring a medical debt they would have to pay. The doctors said my Papa would’ve been paralyzed in a matter of weeks if he hadn’t finally said something to someone and gotten to the hospital. In the end, they said surgery was the only option.

One surgery on his neck, and one more scheduled for his back, Papa has a long road to recovery ahead of him. Multiple sessions of physical therapy, daily, is the only way he’ll regain strength in his legs, which have since started to give out. This therapy is crucial for him to recover both physically and mentally. See, my Papa believes in fending for yourself, in doing for you and for others when the Lord wills it. Being confined to a bed has dimmed his spirit, but he hasn’t given up yet. The nurses give him goals, physical therapy gives him hope, but that hope is about to run out.

Papa’s insurance refuses to pay for his physical therapy any longer. In 10 short days after my writing this, the facility where he’s currently staying will have no choice but to evict him. The insurance will renew two months afterwards, but 60 days is a long time and can either lead to a breakthrough, or a breakdown.

My sisters and I had planned to do all we could, work overtime, loans, pawn things, but when the facility gave us the numbers, it wouldn’t be enough. They require $315 a day, give or take, for his treatment. Rounding it out means just over $10,000 a month. For two months. Not counting medication, personal equipment, etc. We can’t make that happen, not under two weeks.

My Papa is a proud man. So much so, he’d be angry with me for doing this, but it needs to be done. He needs this treatment. He doesn’t see how he’s shrinking, how he’s withdrawing into himself. He doesn’t hear how he talks about wishing he could stop being a burden, or how he tried to prepare but feels he failed.

Remember how I said my Papa’s back issues developed from working on the GM assembly line? Well, when GM declared bankruptcy, they wiped out all debt they owned, including every penny my Papa had put into his retirement fund. Those tens of years of saving, gone. I saw my Papa falter when he thought he had somehow let down his family once, and while he might not approve, this is the only way to keep it from happening again.

Two months. That’s all he needs. $25,000, so much less than what he was robbed of, but still so much more than what he or we can do alone. All funds will go to the facility, to pay for his medical expenses for the two months before the insurance renews and his therapy continues, his hope continues. Two months closer to him being my unstoppable Papa again.

Organizer

Leatrice McKinney
Organizer
Kansas City, MO

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