Hi All,
I would like to introduce myself. My name is Donna Evans, and I have Multiple Myeloma. I was first diagnosed with the disease in 2007 at the age of 37, when my oldest son was 20 years old, my youngest daughter was 7, and my youngest son 5. During this time in my life I was a single mother working in retail as a management lead, while going back and forth to treatments. The doctors had to retrieve my own healthy marrow HCT, only to readminister it to me in accordance to my treatments and chemotherapy. This happened in 2008. Because of the treatment’s success, I was in remission, and back at work.
In March of 2019, close to the time I was supposed to help my sister welcome a new baby boy into the world, I suffered a stroke. I was in the hospital for 3 weeks and physical therapy for 2 weeks. At this time, I was on sick leave, which turned into short term disability. As I was recovering, I was okayed to go back to work, however, my employer did not have a way to accommodate my limited working mobility, even though they told my insurance company and medical provider that they did. This prolonged my returned while I was still recovering, and my employer decided to end my employment after out waiting my short-term disability period, not providing me a return date. Because of this, I could not qualify for unemployment. During this time, I started working with a lawyer to begin the process to get disability benefits because of my continued doctor visits, not only for my post stroke follow-ups, but also for other ailments that the stroke ignited, causing pain and a chain reaction of other ailments that caused me not to be able to work.
In 2020, after the multiple tests and doctor appointments post stroke, and yet another visit to the hospital, I was given the news that my Multiple Myeloma had returned. Devastated about the news, after being in remission for 12 years, I knew I had to reassess my situation. Currently, I have been out of work for almost two years. My short-term disability income ended after 6 months of post stroke recovery and trying to figure out why my health was still failing. I literally had no income, and that made me depressed. Not only that, I had to move back home with my parents to receive additional help in my care as I go through cancer treatments.
The reason I am saying all this is simple, I need help. It is taking forever for my request for disability benefits to be approved, because it is stalled at the Medical phase, and has been there for 6 months, even after all that I have gone through. I am about to start my Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation (HCT) transplant in October of this year, and it is the same procedure that I endured when I was first diagnosed. I need your help because I have no income and my family is doing all they can to help, however, it is not enough to take care of all my expenses that have built up due to not being able to work anymore. Anything you can donate is appreciated. I just need the help until my procedure has taken place. Currently, what has been expressed to me, is that once my Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation (HCT) procedure has been completed, my request for disability benefits will be pushed faster into approval status. And this is great news for me.
Again, anything you can donate will be much appreciated. I thank you so much for your time, and your help, even threw these Corona times.
Donna Evans