Triple crown 'winner' at stress. Previous service injuries include broken bones and electrical shocks. Lost career at end of 2003. FMLA not accepted by federal employer. Buried both parents. Primary care giver for mother. Brother had previously changed will of parents. No inheritance. Savings exhausted. Unemployable after 20 plus years as public servant tech worker... computers, electronics, electricity, and carpentry once long ago.

Home purchased in 1996 and almost paid off before 2003... now sold back to original developers with myself and Fannie Mae covering the fifty percent loss... nice to be realtor, lawyer, or bank.

Sucks to be US. You are welcome for our service(five years overseas).

Needing a job and healthcare now just NEED daily bread and try for warm and safe shelter. Homeless veteran waiting list near FT Bragg over 400... 525 per voucher waiting list... mortgage WAS 640... and wanted to take in two other veterans... NO help from ANYone... really could have USed a lawyer... and too poor to be bankrupt LOL.

I was getting ready for work one day and suddenly just feel, I got back up and finished getting dressed. I had been falling and losing feeling in my left side for a while so I brushed it off not thinking it was anything. I finally get to work and tell my managers what had happened and the way I had been feeling (bad headches, numbness, neck hurting, ect.) They told me that I needed to go to the emergency room, so I call my mom and she rushes me there. I have always had bad headaches since I can remember and I have had numerous x-rays and MRI's. They finally come in and tell us that I have a tumor on my spinal cord and its making me go numb. They rush me to a different hospital in Knoxville because they didnt think they had the right treatment for me. They sent me to Park West and there he came in and said they were going to have to take it out, but they did not want to do it there. So they decided I would go to Vanderbult. I finally had my first surgery May, 2010. It was a 13 hour surgery,because they ended up losing me twice because the size of the tumor was so big that it was blocking or cutting off something that i needed, they had to sit me up the whole surgey instead of laying me down on my stomach. After my surgery I did great I went home within 48 hours, when they thought i wouldnt even be able to walk or talk. I got home and started living my life like i had been before. But one day I started building up fluid and had to be rushed back to Vandy. There i ended up having to have my secound surgery at the begging of July 2010. They had to insert a shunt on my right side (it helps me with the fluid in myy brain so that it will drain correctly in to my stomach). I went home a few days later and I wasnt doing so good. For a few weeks I didnt move or talk to anybody. They were worried but i would not let them call the doctor I wasn over being cut on and messed with. Finally one day I felt amazing i got to go out with my aunt to the store and rode around with a freind. But that night i started feeling bad but we just thought i had done to much that day. The next few days I stilll didnt feel good I was throwing up and head hurt worse than ever. So we call the doctor and had to be rushed back to Vandy to find out that I had a infection on my brain from the shunt. They decided they would take it out and put a new one in since i had to have it. So within in a week i had two more sugerys. The took the shunt out and I stayed in the hospital so the could get rid of the infectiojn, when it was gone enough to have surgery agian they replaced it but put it in the left side of my head. After my surgery I felt a billion times better it was the first time i had smiled in 2 months. Now im doing better and i so thankful for my famil and friends that never left my side. The doctor was amazing he is truly my hero. But without God non of this would have been possible. I know my friends have been touched by my story I just want to be able to touch others.