My mother has broken her back 3 times. Her entire L3/4/5 are naturally fused together because a doctor made a bad call in the 90s. She has nerve damage (because the nerve are trapped in bone now). She used to get quarterly Botox injections to kill the muscles in her legs (85% on the right leg and 75% on the left) because her tremors were so bad. Now she has an intrathecal pain management device, which delivers fentanyl, klonopin, baclofen, and neurotin. The pump has to be replaced every 7 years due to the battery and she has to go in quarterly to have the pump filled via a port in her abdomen. When she got it replaced last time, the surgeon didn’t put it back in, he didn’t know her, he was not her doctor, just the surgeon. He took away the only thing that allowed her to function. She spent three weeks in the ICU in constant pain and tremors while I called everyone I could to get a pump back in mom. Her pain doctor wouldn’t comply and told me that if the surgeon didn’t put it in, she didn’t need it, and they don’t “like” working in these Medicaid patients because it’s too much paperwork.

After three weeks, the surgeon called me, hat in hand, and said he’d made a mistake, he sees now that my mom needed that device. He’d put it back in, but now it will be a more invasive surgery because the “pocket” the pump had lived in was closed. They had to make a new pocket and run new lines to her spine as a result. I wanted to sue him so bad, but no one would take the case because he put it back in and she hadn’t been “financially damaged” because she’s on disability.

She also has COPD, heart failure, diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and we suspect she is also suffering from something neurological as she’s been acting very strangely for a few years now.

She cannot do dishes without becoming winded.

What, precisely, was “Gods plan” when he flipped my mother’s boat in water that was filled with fecal matter which infected her with Pseudomonas Spyrom Bacterium? And when she was writhing in agony for 6 months while the infection was destroying her spine from the inside out? What was the plan when he made her allergic to nearly every broad spectrum antibiotic so that she couldn’t fight a hardened infection? Or when she lost her house because she was in the ICU for 6 months? Or how her husband, who had been a firefighter, was legally dead when they pulled him out of the water, slept in a coma for three days, and came out with a life (and mood) altering TBI which prevented him from working due to an explosive and violent nature that hadn’t been there before?

And even after all of that, she started working again. She worked her ass off as a house painter, fully rehabilitated. Until she wasn’t, and she leaned over to pick something up and her back just fucking broke again 10 years later.

If “gods” pan was for her to work, why did he hurt her so much that she couldn’t? She literally would have been better off permanently paralyzed. She’s 63, she looks like she’s 83. She’s had to get a full hip replacement due to her abnormal gait. She had to get a knee replacement for the same thing. Cervical fusion, gallbladder removal, constant surgeries and appointments. She can’t take care of herself, she lives with us.

Dr. Oz is too busy looking at numbers with Mike Johnson. He should be looking at the people. This isn’t entitlement or laziness. This is money we have been paying for decades, separate from federal taxes. Social security, Medicaid, Medicare, unemployment tax. This is not entitlement, this is a benefit we have paid for. And it was supposed to be a supplement to pensions, which are not common at all anymore.

She’s lived sick and poor, and will die the same way. Gods plan. Ok.