Could it be because of your condition?

7-22- Depression weighs me down so heavily that motivation to do anything is so difficult. It is binding. It is a prison that is nearly inescapable. My body feels heavy. The nerve pain in my legs and back seem to ache worse. There seems no reason for anything good, or anything bad. Time drags on slowly, yet it stands still at the same time. I could lie here in a daze for hours and not even realize the passage of time.

Food loses taste. Thoughts come so sluggishly, yet can constantly bombard me at the same time. It is 5PM and I have done only one thing of the numerous things that I swore that I must do, and that was only because of a fluke phone call that I received. I want to just sleep on forever, never wake up. Live in my dreams, despite the fact that nightmares were what I woke to this morning.

I cannot enjoy reading, writing, playing any of my video games. I am in stasis  Suspended animation of my soul.

7-29-
So the idea has been posed, could M have ended our relationship because the surgery did not fix me? My previous boyfriend left me as soon as he heard I was filing for SSI. On Friday I saw him for the first time since I repo'd my PS3 and I also heard a few more things that was news to me.

I realize I need to name my best friend because he is causing so much trouble, Allen, he was told some things by M that was kept from me completely and that affected my behavior and made me look crazy when if I had known the situation I would have behaved differently.

M was surprised that Allen had kept it from me. But Allen likes me, did he keep it from me to better his own chances? Or was it just him being lazy and not telling me anything like he constantly does?

But the big question on everyone's lips, "Do you think he might have left because of your physical condition?" And the sad thing is that I cannot say yes, nor no, with certainty in my heart. I thought before Friday for sure the answer was no, for sure no... But on Friday I saw M, he was there at the arcade, along with tens of other people I had not seen for a long time.

I confided in a friend who had a very bad situation with a girl some years ago about what had happened as I was trying not to hyper-ventilate as I downed a Valium pill. He eventually got me to identify M and was bugging me as to why and how I would possibly date him in the first place. Then I had to re-explain that I had been ambushed, I hadn't planned to date him.

Another gamer girl was there, and she paid me barely more attention than she did at the birthday party that I threw for her last year. It's funny how much I tried to be her friend and she was happy to take the gifts and use me when she needed something, but she is never there if I need something. Also I suspect she is the person whom M desires.

On World of Warcraft I seem to get most of my outside personal connections with people. I have fun trolling sometimes, and have even willingly shown photos of myself to the entire General Chat populous. Surprisingly no one goes and calls me down for being ugly or fat, like how I feel, maybe it is just the depression and anxiety? They think I am very attractive. How can I be single?

Could it be because of my back?

I saw M cry several times about very painful topics or things... I got him alone a moment on Friday and asked him if he cried at all the day he broke up with me. I couldn't stop sobbing. He stared coldly at me and asked if it mattered, and I said that yes, it mattered to me. He said no, he hadn't.

How can I be single?

Because of my back.

I got stood up for a dinner date from some guy in his late 30s or maybe even early 40s, that hadn't seen me in the wheel chair, but I did have the cane. I am a catch for someone who looks the way he did, at least if I go by popular opinion.

It is some horrid cycle. My back and my depression. I am held down physically by pain, and then held down emotionally by depression from the MDD or Bi-Polar, or depression caused by events caused because of my back.

As I was typing that part above last week, I was staring at that bottle of blood pressure medication. I still can't get rid of it. No one knows I have it. I just want that escape button available to press if I really need it. As I finally begin to fall out of love with M, realizing I am just a piece of used trash, there is no reason for me not to be depressed. My back is not healing right. My stay in Hellmont ruined it healing properly. Permanent nerve damage has occurred. I can't sit up for more than an hour before keeling over in pain. SSI, what job can I do, lying in bed all day, popping 3 Dilaudid every day as I am now having to do just to deal with the pain. The pain had become out of control. The nerve roots must be very flared up. So I have to end this post. because just my shoulders being up is too painful.

This is why I am single.

PTSD and ADHD

I had been suffering a severe bi-polar episode. Fortunately I have calmed down. I got home extremely late last night, and I wanted to pull my hair out because of the ineptitude of my roommate. I drove us home last night, which is a common occurrence given that he is often very tired, and really too sleepy to drive safely, and my insomnia (even before Hellmont), keeps me pretty wide eyed and bushy tailed until wee morning hours.

He needed some allergy medication, and OTC, that I take, so he took some from my medication purse...  Yes, sadly I have a little, well not too little purse, for all of my medications that I take on a scheduled time. So he took some. Once we arrived home I over looked that the bag was still in the car, thinking he had it, because I had no idea where he had put it after taking the loratidine.

My roommate had the gall to be angry at me that I somehow forget the medications in the car, when I didn't even know where the hell he had left them! I nearly collapsed outside trying to retrieve them, I was in so much pain. He was upset with me that I had failed to get it from his car, and had to wake him up as I was putting things in place in my room (as I was starving and put water to boil on the stove first, and got noodles), and noticed they were missing, and he hadn't taken them with my backpack. How on earth was I supposed to know where he put them?! His immaturity is just so annoying at times, because he is generally so intelligent.

He has such a short fuse when it comes to me, though. Anything I might say or do can make him quickly snap at me. It finally got so bad that I left my guild in World of Warcraft because I felt so stressed being in there with him. The anxiety was too much for me to bear.

I was able to speak to him about the WoW thing, but as he is at work right now, I have not yet been able to discuss what happened last night, or well early this morning. Perhaps next time I just shouldn't let him touch my things.

So yesterday was a generally nice day. There is a young man who is from out of state who comes to the arcade nearly daily who has taken a liking to me. Unfortunately his liking is a bit too much, I can see the jealousy he has when other guys talk to me and it bothers me a lot. He also is extremely sexual so we definitely would not be compatible dating.

I am not sure how to say, hey dude, I have PTSD from severe sexual abuse nearly most of my life, so yeah, I don't think this'll work. He is also very immature, too, which I have witnessed and heard first hand and before my eyes.

There were two guys who did not seem to be immature creeps who did seem to take a liking to me though. One actually likes Blazblue! The other I did not get to speak to for very long, but it is more likely that I might get more of a date with him perhaps to get to know him better, and I am sure that I could pull him into the scene.

It is frustrating that my anxiety has to go up and down throughout the day and night, for days. I really do not handle it well. Yesterday the pain was very bad. I casually played with several people, but the pain broke through my facade of me just having some minor ailment that makes me use a cane. I've had to take my Dilaudid yesterday and today just to not go and crawl up to the freeway and let a semi truck hit me.

At least there are amusing things to see. While writing this post I got very distracted, damn ADHD, and wound up watching leaked My Little Pony movie footage, but it took much work to get it. It was very enjoyable. It is one thing that I really like, because it is so happy and innocent I suppose. So mentions of yesterday are actually of Friday, lol. I started this post at 2PM, it is now after 2AM....

Bi-Polar- Depression Swinging In

Some names may have been changed.

So, I have said that I have had a general happiness for life for some time now... but it has not kept my demons at bay of my mental illnesses. I realized that I was delaying posting on here, the only real outlet I have, due to being severely depressed. I have been idolizing suicidal thoughts, carefully trying to calculate how much of blood pressure medication and sedative that it would take to put me to sleep forever.

Last night as I sat up with the insomnia gained from Hellmont, because of the kleptomaniac who kept coming into my room to steal my panties, origami, and glasses. I was freaking out badly, just apologizing to my deceased mother that the life that she had given to me was too difficult and not pleasurable enough... I broke down and called someone I hadn't really spoken to in a very long time.

In all honesty hostility and anger that even right now I still hold, along with fear of his feelings that he had and I feared might still have for me, have kept me from maintaining our friendship. I have just sort of observed his life from afar. His life being public enough for me to watch it from afar for the most part, just not the small details. It helped, speaking to him. At the same time it made one thing worse, how I feel about my first boyfriend, and if I ever return back to where I was raised near Chicago, IL how people will treat me because of the lies that he has instilled into everyone. It is much alike how my father has gone around speaking of me of being some drug using tramp. Ha, perhaps they worked together?

My first boyfriend was a nightmare, the entire situation was a nightmare, the whole thing was something that also could have been avoided and should have been... because who I spoke with early this morning in my hyper-depressive state, he was the one that I wanted to date, when Tim began to flirt and plant the seeds of making me interested in him.

Tim was best friends with Kevin. Now Kevin was super nerd, well he still is, and shy and kind and sweet and yeah pretty much my type of guy, and so I was flirty and tried to find out if he had a girlfriend, and he even was able to puzzle out that I had slyly tried to find out if he was single without straight out asking it! Unlike other nice shy guys who I may have interest in more recently.

Tim had a crush on me though, and because of this Kevin set aside my feeling, his own crush on me, and let Tim pursue me... Kevin also set aside his fear of knowledge of how violent Tim could be, thinking that Tim would never hurt a girl, but he was very wrong. Now Kevin and Tim are friends again, and I think Tim has convinced Kevin that everything that happened between us was consensual and nice, but sadly it was not so. This is where some of my PTSD comes from, what Tim did to me.

For 2 months Tim was really nice and sweet, well 1 1/2 months. Then, something trivial made his anger spike and he hit me. Of course he said he was sorry, he lost control, he would never do it again, and I believed it. I believed it the second time, too. Once he began to leave bruises and sprained muscles I began to get scared, and he said that if I left, well hinted, that I would not be safe. Then I was raped at 2 months, and after dismissed and told to go walk home in the cold fall weather. I was freezing and every step hurt, but I soon learned the trick was to try not to fight it.

I went to my father for help, explaining what was going on, knowing that if I went to police, given how the police protected my father illegally kicking me out, they probably would contact him, I wanted to know what he would say. I only begged one thing, that he not tell my step-mother. He later contacted me, saying, "We know you're lying." So he broke his promise, and somehow knew something that was completely untrue? I bruised my own neck for some reason?

Because of Tim anything beyond kissing causes extreme anxiety, and I mean ANYTHING. Like, you move off my face and I have flashbacks often, I cry, I scream, I jump, I run away, except with M.... M was an exception, and that was why I was so upset last night. Today is his birthday. I wish that I could celebrate it with him. I wish I was still with him. The only guy that I have dated that did not rile up my PTSD.

I sort of had a date on Friday night, sort of impromptu, a guy was like want to eat? It was just us two, and he was flirting, so yeah, date, no date, whatever. Even with him he dredged up problems towards the end that left me quiet and troubled for the end of the night and the entire weekend, hence my long absence.

Kevin told me after Tim finally got tired of me and left me that he knew Tim was violent. Kevin told me about his crush. Kevin even maintained a crush and held his angst against me for years after I left home. Speaking with him helped me in the short-term, but now my mind is swarming with so many other things. Yes, yes, I am so fit to work as I struggle not to swallow that bottle of pills over there. I would get rid of them, but I want them, just in case....

Just in case I cannot take it anymore... Hellmont introduced permanent nerve damage and two new nerves that hurt from my tail bone, so if the pain or emotional pain becomes too much to handle, I just want that back-up. Especially if Kevin doesn't like me anymore, it's good if he despises me now. One more person who won't give a s*** if I am gone.

The World Without Us [dual post]

So I often watch documentaries to fill time in my day, often to learn or just be entertained. Sometimes I watch very slanted ones simply for amusement, but today I revisited one that I had watched some time ago called The World Without Us.

Now a lot of the people on Netflix have given it bad reviews, but I am guessing that very few of them have taken college level world history classes. So many points in the movie echo true. Many countries depend on U.S. military force occupying them or a nearby country, yet so often Americans are resented.

There was a woman who was very angry at Clinton over her son’s death at the hand of Serbians. Yet, the entire situation was that Dutch military had come into the area, handed over their uniforms and weapons to the genocidal Serbs and stood by as the Serbs used this to trick thousands of people to their deaths with a promise of protection, pretending that they were with the Dutch. It seems much more that if the Dutch had not come, or at least not helped genocidal radicals, her son could very well be alive today yet she is angry at the U.S.

It covered Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, and the hostilities that the USA handles and what might happen if the USA pulled out. You even saw people from countries stating frankly that they depend on America to defend them.

The reason I decided to watch it again was to try to fire up the urge to seek justice for myself and find inspiration for my novel series. The horrible injustices in North Korea and China, nearly the entire Middle East, most of Africa… At the end as the credits rolled, someone from Taiwan said that Americans take their democracy for granted, and it is true. Most of us go about life taking many things for granted, food to eat, a bed to sleep in, and safety. I did for the first seventeen years of my life, but after I was kicked out because my gold-digger step-mom didn’t want me in the picture, I began to learn to appreciate a lot.

I suppose I should perhaps explain that a little more. I have been on my own since shortly after my seventeenth birthday. My mother was advised to abort me before I was born, due to pre-eclampsia, high blood pressure caused from pregnancy. She wound up getting eclampsia and it damaged her kidneys, and she later had full kidney failure. My father on a whim got tested to see if he could donate when I was 6, and he was a near perfect match. He hadn’t been tested previously because the odds of a married couple being a match would be like one in a million. So he gave her a kidney, and she had to be on immunosuppressants to prevent rejection. This essentially made her like people who had AIDS before the 2000’s.

She began to die on a Friday night on February 2, 2001, and died early in the morning on the 3^rd after the life support machines had been removed. She had been in a coma for quite some time. By the next Saturday my father was dating the woman he is now married to.

Manipulative does not even begin to describe Nancy, who is an ex-drug user. She seemed kind to me while my elder sister was in the house. My older sister ran with a bad crowd, did poorly in school, skipped classes, and would argue with my parents constantly, even destroying the last thing that I made with my mom.. Literally tearing it to pieces in her rage, and throwing it at our father and step-mom.

Once my sister turned 18, my father was going to give her a month to move out, but my sister left on her own accord before he had a chance to even tell her. Then suddenly my parents began to have the same “problems” with me. I was not sleeping around with guys, I hadn't even kissed one! I was getting straight A’s, applying into a gifted program to take college classes in high school. Socially I was involved with church youth group activities.

Many times I was randomly taken to a doctor to have my blood drawn and tested for non existent drugs, that still to this day I have never partaken in, but my father travels to Narcotic Anonymous meetings internationally and claims that I did. I got a part time job once I turned sixteen, saved up and bought a car. Once I was seventeen I had church, job, school, theatre, and I cleaned the entire house and did half of the cooking, although I was not allowed to eat with my parents any longer.

The day I was kicked out my father attacked me, I blacked out for a second and I remember the water bottle that hit my head and him punching me, I curled up, trying to protect my head, when my step-mother’s sister finally yelled for the both of us to stop it. I was committing a wrong by doing nothing? It was all because I was told to find a second job, and I hadn't found one yet.

The school program I was in actually told parents to try to keep us students from even getting one job during the school year, the courses were so intense. It had nothing to do with money, as I mentioned he has spoken internationally, my father is well off.

I then learned how much it meant to have a bed, food, shelter, safety, warmth, health, and much more. It was then I decided that I wanted to be able to effect people for the good. In some of the documentaries I hear about people who have escaped from North Korea and they talk about how they only ate rice, and I recall when I would only have a bit of rice as a meal for the day myself- if even that. Perhaps that is why I watch so many of those films, even though those countries as a whole are so much worse off, I can sadly relate to many of the people.

Sleeping with several pairs of pants on, sweaters, and a coat, and you are still cold is not fun. You wake up in your bed, under your blanket, you are cold and you see your breath despite being indoors..... 

When I came to California and I received help from my now-ex boyfriend’s family, I was so grateful, to the point that they were often confused. Eating food everyday had become a novelty to me. Then when I began to work, a job that was dollars above the minimum wage, it was even more amazing. But they would ask me, why was I so happy just to have food offered to me? Why was I so happy to have new clothing? Why did it make me so overjoyed to get shoes?

Even now, after I got hurt, although it is difficult to survive off of only food stamps and the generosity of others, food stamps offer more than I ever expected from when after my mother died, until when I moved here. Then when I got hurt and I got state disability, I did not have money for food, ironically I got too much money from disability for food stamps, despite my medical bills leaving only around $20 a month for food. Food stamps now gives me $200 a month for food, and I don’t have medical bills.

What is wrong with our government? People who really need help do not get it, just because of numbers.

Disabled, A Turn Off Or Turn On?

On Fridays I often frequent Japan Arcade in downtown Los Angeles. I have checked out the little bar that is at X-Lanes, the bowling alley that was supposed to open years ago, but just opened months ago, lol. The first time in my life, a guy I didn't know bought me a drink a couple weeks ago, but he was there with his wife. It was merely to continue the conversation that we were having about neurology, that came up because I was in a wheelchair. Aside from that, I have not really had a guy purchase me much of anything unless we were dating, or he was a good friend, the kind that I would pay for him when I had been working.

There is a semi-regular who goes to the arcade now who is mostly paraplegic, but it's permanent for him. He had a motorcycle accident. He can move his left leg some, but not much. I usually become wheelchair bound after hours of walking about. It was the second time we ran into each other and both times we happened to be in wheelchairs. He showed a definite interest in me.

When I am out of my chair, I get attention decently enough. As soon as I get in the chair, the attention I get is different, though. People part, they try to offer help, they are stunned, they stare, and other things like that. Which brings to light the question of, is it more common for disabled to date other disabled people?

Perhaps it is less intimidating to try to get my attention because I am in a wheelchair?

Yet, the entire situation could be because I was the only girl there that shows up regularly when he has gone there on Fridays. So is it because it is a small pond to fish, and he is the only guy there who doesn't care about the chair, or isn't too shy to flirt with me?

Another guy seemed to not care about my chair. I hate to say his directness was very extreme. I was trying to get one of my guy friends to pull me into a conversation or something, but none of them did, they all found the situation funny that this guy was wanting to play all these games with me. King of Fighters, which I am not too good at, especially given he has played for years, and KOF13 was my first KOF. Then we played Samurai Showdown that got selected somehow accidentally in a NeoGeo cabinet. He was asking if he beat me if he would win a kiss, and I was trying to explain that I didn't know him, so I was sorry, but no. But, alas, I beat him. Go figure.

Then we played Garou Mark of the Wolves, but the buttons were messed up, so he kept beating me. Instead of LP HP LK HK (light punch, hard punch, light kick, hard kick), it was LP LK HP and then some sort of sweeping move that was baffling me. Eventually I just gave up using hard kick, which sucks not having when playing with B. Jenet, and kicked his ass. Then he had to go with his friends, and I gave him my number, simply because I don't think I will have a way to pay my phone bill...

A cell phone is sort of needed for the ACE of Ventura program. You get calls anytime from 8AM to 6PM setting up appointments, and you need GPS to get to some of the craziest places. I want to plant my face into a wall several times out of frustration. But, my cell phone worked early Saturday morning at 2AM when he called me twice and I shyly pretended that I didn't notice it.

In other more interesting news, for L.A. there was a huge fireworks accident in Simi Valley, with a huge explosion with fireworks going into the crowd of people. Seeing that on the news made me feel a bit better about missing out on fireworks.

I have a playlist that I play for writing my blog, as I was listening to a song by Shiny Toy Guns, I just recalled, there was another guy who seemed to be somewhat flirtatious with me upon hearing my new-to-him single status. But, it could all be in my head.

He is a really cool guy who moved away quite some time ago. We talked for a while last night, and it was nice. He said that I can still read and write, so I have that going for me, and it is very right. I have a novel series in the works, aside to the silly screenplays that I have been tinkering with. I have always enjoyed writing, even since I was taught how to do it.

But even with that, mentally and physically, it was too much for M. I fell in love only to be hurt. I wonder if I bore all my mental problems out openly if guys would even bother speaking to me.

July 3rd and 4th...

So I got records of what the demon doctor Ashokan did to me on March 18th, proudly stating the reason I was pulling the records was that I was suing him. When I asked my friend where his new office was, he said he didn't know where it was. Googling it, 300 miles away. Sounds like someone was running from something.

It took every ounce of strength to speak over the phone to a VCMC patient's rights representative about how I was assaulted by a nurse with an object. So being in Ventura yesterday and going to Hillmont, which shares parking and food facilities with VCMC.

I needed to address the atrocious treatment that I had received during some time I had spent at Hillmont. For further details about the stay see my other blog. I arrived with my friend and I was sort of bewildered being in the front of the building and finally a man, Dr. Fire asked if he could help.

"I need to speak to someone high up about the abhorrent time I had while I spent time at Hillmont," I explained.

"Oh, well that would be me," he replied, somewhat surprised and alarmed.

We went and sit down and he took notes of everything I said. The nurses and the names, what they did, how they may have set back my healing process back for months... He was very pro-patient and explained that he was new to over-seeing the facility. I explained to him that I was happy to hear that he wanted to make changes...

If I ever was suicidal in the future, I'd rather off myself than go back to Hellmont based on how I was treated.

He was disturbed that a fully licensed nurse was yelling at me not to move, or else I would not get my medication, because the blood pressure machine was not working on my right arm, dangling, as I stood in front of her, very still. (For those unaware, even nursing assistants are taught, usually the left arm should be used, patient is sat down, the arm is around chest level, and that is how you take blood pressure.) But, she kept screaming at me. I just kept apologizing that I was doing my best not to move, instead of correcting her medical negligence like perhaps I should have.

Dr. Fire said that me coming forward with everything like this, the names, the details, everything, was courageous. That is definitely not an adjective I would ever use to describe myself. He said that for every person that comes forward there are probably 20 more patients who had similarly bad experiences and just never followed through with coming forward.

People like that give me some hope in humanity, that there are still good doctors out there still. That they are not all jaded.

Today on the fourth I woke up and I could feel something wrong, by more not feeling my lower legs well. I am struggling with keeping fecal matter in my bowels while lying down, standing up is even worse, I already had to accidents. Thankfully pantie-liners work in keeping it from making it a mess, but I feel humiliated and depressed. I love the fireworks...

I really wanted to go downtown to Little Tokyo and watch them from the roof, that would have been cool. Instead I am holed up in my room afraid that I may crap my pants at any moment, because I have to actively try not to.

Things happen for a reason... The surgery was supposed to fix all of this! I wish I had a My Little Pony plushie to hug, heh. Or a Mewtwo one. Mewtwo is cool, too.

Just have to keep fighting I suppose.


Oh oh! I forgot, I've also had a lot of items stolen from that place too...

Medical records, malpractice, and just breaking the law...

So, before my visit to Clinicas del Ventura, I was just in constant severe pain. Well what most people would consider severe, but to me it had just kind of become sort of moderate because of the constant ache of it.

March 18th changed my life forever. Dr. Annamalai Ashokan gave me an epidural, supposedly. It was done incorrectly, in an unsterile environment, and I truly do not believe he injected steroids into my back.

He was at a normal basic primary clinic, pain management, which is where epidural injections fall under, was not listed under their practice. I naively saw him in a room and showed him my back, which I assumed he was going to poke and prod like most doctors always seem to do.

I had copies of my MRI's and x-rays with me, but suddenly I felt a cool spray, I asked what it was, and he said it would help numb. Epidurals go into your spine, a spray numbs skin. Before I could begin to say "What the f*** is going on?!" I felt a needle slide into my back. The pain was explosive.

He told me, "That stick, don't use that stick." His horrible English referring to my cane, and he left. It took me minutes before I could gather senses enough to leave the room. It felt like things had been displaced. The man had no idea that I even had an extra vertebrae, God and he only knows where he injected me.

The first step on my feet was agony. It felt as if someone had gone and poured acid down my spine, and down the nerve roots passing through the L4-L5 and L5-S1 pathways. I folded my cane up and staggered to the lobby, each step gasping for air through my pain.

I got only ten feet before I collapsed and began to scream in agony, I could no longer hide it. My ex boyfriend of 6 1/2 years who had taken me was very angry, demanding what had been done to me. I had come for a consultation for pain management, why was I limping out and now crumpled on the floor screaming.

The front staff wanted to actually call an ambulance. Their own doctor had done enough damage to me, that they wanted me to seek emergency care from the hospital! I now can see why he no longer works there. It took an hour before I was finally strong enough to limp to the car, with help of my cane and my ex.

Now, those copies of MRI's I had are quite interesting. At my L3-L4 level, the disc protrusion was 4mm, L4-L5 a 5mm protrusion, and L5-S1 and 4/5mm protrusion, as of early 2012. I have a long list of doctor reports of me going in, pain level being the same every time. Blood pressure the same every time. For a year and three months there is no change in my pain or in anything, except that the pain won't go away, and that is a problem.

Until March 18th. I expected to hurt very badly for at least a week, as I had had two epidurals previously in 2011, and they just made me sore for a month, but this was different. On the 29th of March I discovered that could not urinate, at all. I had to go to the emergency room to be alleviated. Then again on April 2cd, on a doctor's visit they had to catheter me.

I remember hearing Linda Rubino, a PAC, arguing with my county insurance over the phone that I did not have a UTI (urinary tract infection), that there was something seriously wrong, that I needed to be seen by someone to check my back immediately. When they had checked the reflexes in my knees and ankles, they were very weak.

I had no idea permanent nerve damage was taking place as I overheard her frantic phone call.

So today I received the medical records for when I was admitted to my local hospital after trying to take a walk, collapsing after losing sensation and ability to move my legs, and being admitted because I couldn't walk, and my knees and ankles had no reflexes.

They did an MRI, and when I saw it, my jaw dropped. It was apparent I needed surgery immediately. Today I got that report. My L3-L4 disc remained 4mm, L4-L5 disc went from 5mm to 11cm, and L5-S1 remained 5mm. Now how on earth did that single disc, and the other discs remain the same, fall out of place twice as much as it was?

The protrusion at the L4-L5 was so severe it left 5-7mm in my spinal canal for my spinal cord. Whereas elsewhere there was 17mm of space normally. Of course the doctor did not tell me that my spinal cord was being crushed, along with my nerves, but well, I could feel the nerves. I saw the MRI image and instead of seeing the disc poking out of place and then the canal, it was one solid mass.

It took until June 5th to get my surgery. Afterwards I was on a Dilaudid IV for pain and was able to walk within days. I was discharged within days. Soon I was nearly back to where I had been before March, just with more aches and pains, but then I got a post surgical infection and suffered trauma that no one should suffer.

I called my wonderful, great and caring surgeon, Dr. Herman, because I was running a fever over 100 degrees, and I take a prescription NSAID (anti-inflammatory, like Advil or Motrin but a lot stronger) and I still had a fever, so that was alarming. I was put into an isolation ward for 2 days at VCMC. That was when by definition of "California Penal Code 289 PC" I was raped, by "forcible penetration with a foreign object."

It took me until today to actually speak to someone at the hospital about it, and they are going to look into it. It was a simple pelvic exam turned into a nurse taking her anger out on me as I was crying and begging her to stop, because it hurt so badly. I hadn't seen myself bleed that much except for the time I accidentally sliced my thumb open cooking, or gotten into a bicycling accident. Then she angrily left me alone there, and I felt too shamed to tell the next nurse who came in what had occurred, because I felt embarrassed and the nurse was so chipper.

Why take up a job in the medical field if you are just wanting to hurt people?

Pain, the unfair legality, and how I became disabled.

I planned to escape the house on Saturday and hitch a ride into downtown Los Angeles with my roommate, but as pain crippled me in my steps, I made the adult and frustrating decision to stay home and rest my back...

I watched a documentary called "Hot Coffee", available on Netflix. Sure enough as it began, it stated that most people have assumptions about the McDonald's hot coffee case, where a woman sued after spilling coffee on herself. I was expecting a documentary about how frivolous lawsuits have made it difficult for people like myself to seek justice in the system, but then as I watched I began to hear the real story.

Stella Liebeck was not even driving as many news reports, reported incorrectly. She was not even in a moving car. Her grandchild parked them and she was preparing to put cream and sugar into her coffee, then the lid popped off and the coffee spilled, leaving her with extremely severe burns, at least of the third degree.

The temperature of McDonald's coffee at that time, now it is at least 10 degrees lower, was to be 180-190 degrees Fahrenheit... to serve to customers. Those temperatures will easily cause second degree burns "if you're lucky" a doctor explains, in the movie.

Poor Stella at  79 had to have extensive skin grafts, and her doctors did not think that she was going to survive at first. If you have a strong stomach, Google for the pictures, and you can see just how much of her skin was damaged. Typically, even at a younger age, if you have severe enough burns on enough of your body, prognoses are not good.

Then it went on to explain about how after that case businesses fueled and funded politicians to put caps on damages people can seek. Caps on the time.

When I was first injured, it was a car accident, December 19th, 2010, I wasn't even supposed to work. One of the coworkers I considered a friend, I was covering for her, because she begged for the day off, and the 'me of then' gave in. Ironically my injury has made me had to be a stronger person to speak up for my rights, even if it has taken years.

Another friend was driving me to work. Let's call him Ned. He had an old 2-door jeep-like vehicle, reminding me of the Sidekick my mother drove when I was a kid, or those cars you see people drive in Africa who are on safari or something. It had a strange front bumper, just a plain steel bar set inches in front of the vehicle.

It was raining, as it often does in winter in Los Angeles. We were going off the 405, and he was going 45mph when he went for the Sherman Way exit, a very sharply curved exit, and I knew that it was too fast. He braked, but the tires locked and we hydroplaned into the guard-railing, thankfully, or maybe not given how off-road his vehicle was, it did its job, and we bounced back. On the leather seat I was slid down and to the right out of my seatbelt from the sheer force.

He asked if I was okay as I picked myself up from the floorboards, having to unbuckle and rebuckle the seatbelt. I said that I was fine, and we continued to my work. At my work, we found the passenger side of his bumper was bent to around a 45 degree angle, actually hitting his car. He asked again if I was alright, and I said I felt fine.

It was not until 30 minutes later that the pain hit me, and I had to call around for someone to take me to my doctor who was also an urgent care center. (Guess who came to fill in for me? My friend who needed the day off, haha.) When I had received my medical insurance though work, they had assigned me a doctor who was in southern Los Angeles, and at the time I lived in northern San Fernando Valley (this would be around 2 hours away for those not familiar with L.A.), and worked in the middle. I was baffled as to why they would assign me a doctor so far away. With a bad sinus infection I called them, and changed it to Valley Urgent Care at 9346 Corbin Ave in Northridge, CA 91324, (feel free to write hate mail, if you'd like.) it was mere minutes from my home! I have Dr. Surinder P Puri to thank for a quick and speedy recovery from that sinus infection. The staff was polite, I was seen quickly, treated politely, and I had a wonderful experience. Later when I went for a physical, just to check to make sure I was healthy given my bad family health history, again, a great experience.

When I went in for my back, I had no idea, but where I hurt the most, my lower back, the lumbar, they called off for x-rays, but of my mid and upper back only, they excluded my lower lumbar back. I was soon to discover how horribly incompetent this place was. I was obviously in severe pain, but my x-rays looked alright (probably because they were of parts of my back that are still perfectly fine), so he signed me off work for 2 weeks. When I was still hurting after 2 weeks, returned to work, I went back to visit him. They had given me Vicodin at first, but it was not helping the pain, so they tried Vicodin ES, which is 50% stronger. He suggested another week off from work, and so I took off another week. It was not until late in February that I finally got an MRI.

The MRI showed that I had herniated (slipped) discs, which they told me but it showed an extra spinal disc, which I was not told by anyone at Valley Urgent Care. Or about my lumbar spinal stenosis (narrowing of the spinal canal), lumbar lordosis (a severe curvature of the spine), anterolisthesis (vertebrae slip forward upon one another, which with herniations going backwards makes it worse), facet arthropathy (facets are the joints between and behind adjacent vertebrae, and mine were and are in bad shape in my lower back, making bending difficult, but adding to the lack of space in my spinal canal). There was also so much more. The severity of the lumbar lordosis was not truly seen until September when I went out of my HMO and into my PPO to see a back specialist, I called for my x-rays only to find Dr. Puri hadn't ordered any for my lower back. The first x-rays of my lower back brought my lordosis from mild to severe. This could only be seen by standing x-rays.

Dr. Puri's care began to become horrible as I was working with very severe injuries, and I was completely unaware. Had we known my lordosis was so bad, and that I had an extra spinal disc, I am sure that my work habits would have been changed. One day I was crouching to open a crate from a shipment we had just received in the pharmacy for an order a patient had, and I felt a bubbling sensation in my back before what felt like acid being poured deep within. I screamed and fell to the floor. This was in late January and the patient I was helping said, "That sounds like a slipped disc."

Paramedics had to take me from the store. After a week I was back working, and gritting my teeth all day doing it. Once we closed I would cry from the pain. I finally began to fall apart in front of customers, and my manager began to act vengefully upon me, giving me work that was not my work, giving me duties that were against the doctor's note I had to return to work with limitations. (She is now very well known throughout San Fernando Valley CVS's and no one ever wants to work there if anyone is sick. But, Daniella has been though a lot, although it does not excuse taking her anger and frustration out on others.)

(9/14 update-- all of the original staff has quit and gone to other stores or just quit CVS completely. She can't find regular staff to stay.)

Finally one day she yelled at me not to return to work until I was better. (As I am still not better, she has asked about me a few times to other people, because I was the "lead pharmacy tech" for the evening. Frankly I was a doormat, and I did more work than the morning lead tech, but did not mind at the time because I cared for the patients I was helping so much.)

Then I had to get disability. CVS refused to pay me anything, but they had to pay me a minimum of $25 a week, which got taxed down to $18 something (seriously). And then the state. Dr. Puri's office charged me $20 per page per form to be filled out, and I was frustrated that they would sign me disabled for a week, when I hadn't even started physical therapy yet! The day that they made me pay $20 for 3 days of disability, (which was $225 a week), I changed doctors.

Little did I know that the medical group had a huge infrastructure. I began to see Dr. Reginald Coates, who was and is a fantastic doctor. The only bad thing that occurred was that in the computer, he saw that there was an x-ray of my entire back, including 'lower back' and that there was nothing remarkable. There was a straight out lie in my medical record for when I went to see him. So when I was finished with physical therapy and then regressed, he was baffled and said he was unwilling to sign me off for more disability.

After I saw the back doctor, I later saw Dr. Coates and explained how severe my lordosis is, and he felt very bad, but I assured him it was entirely Dr. Puri and Valley Urgent Care's fault. Then I lost my private insurance, and had to get government help, but I could only qualify for ACE of Ventura county due to my lack of children, or being federally disabled.

I realize now as I am pursuing a lawsuit against a doctor who gave me a faulty epidural that I should have sued Dr. Puri, but I had no idea about the statute of limitations or of the legal system, and at that time I didn't speak up for myself as much as I do now, because I now must. It is way too late now though. Also as I face suing the doctor who injected me with, God only know what, I will be limited to $250,000, which is a lot of money, but I will have to pay 25-40% lawyer, 50k in back-owed medical bills, and $100,000, in the best case, left to compensate me for the rest of my life. I will fall down at times I do not know, perhaps further getting injured. I may have incontinence at times I do not know, being humiliated. I will probably never regain feeling in certain parts of my legs.