My Family's Support for one year.

Michael H Orr is organizing this fundraiser.

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My name is Michael H Orr. In 2011, I was happy and strong. My family meant everything to me (and still does). I had a minor back problem that I treated myself with an inversion table, ice, exercise and stretching. All those proven techniques helped me for many years, but I was getting tired of doing the same thing over and over again. I spoke to a friend who had a similar problem with his back and he told me to see a friend of his who had helped him greatly without invasive surgery. I contacted the doctor, made an appointment and saw him the next week. He did two anesthetically applied facet block procedures that worked miraculously. A couple of weeks later, he did the facet block procedure with radio frequencies and micro surgery (he never informed me of what he was going to use in the surgery). It is not a normal practice to put the patient to sleep during the use of radio frequency treatments. When I woke up from surgery, I was in severe pain and was shaking. My wife said I was very pale and could only say: "Pain." I asked the doctor if this level of pain was normal and he said: "Yes. You will feel as well as you did when you walked in today." I was still very uncomfortable and had to be taken to my car in a wheel chair as I left his office. I dealt with the pain for two days, but on the third day, I called the doctor's office. He wasn't in (it was Saturday) so I went to the emergency room at Sarasota Memorial Hospital. They gave me pain medication to get me through the weekend, but said I had to see my pain medication doctor to get more pain medication. I saw my doctor Monday and he gave me a prescription for Opana. Opana is a Class IV narcotic and was very hard to get at the pharmacy. I finally got it two days later. I took one pill as directed and my wife said I was incoherent. I took another pill the next day and fell asleep on the toilet. I took one more pill the following day and decided Opana was not for me. I told my doctor how Opana effected me and he told me he had a "miracle shot" for me. On May15th, the doctor did a very high dosage epidural cortisone shot in my lower back. I couldn't lay down and was screaming in pain. The doctor told his assistant to ask all the people in the waiting room to go outside so they wouldn't hear my screams. My wife was one of the people. We saw a woman at the Sarasota Square Mall who came up to us and said she knew who we were. She said I was the man screaming in the operating room at Doctor __________'s office and she would testify for us if we wanted her to. We were happy to hear someone who would help us. After the shot, I woke up in extreme pain and couldn't walk. At this time, I want to mention I was able to run and jump into this doctor's office before he touched me. The doctor placed his hand on my shoulder and said: "I'm sorry Michael. That's all I can do for you. Now you need surgery." My wife and I were shocked. We knew we couldn't do anything about this doctor's incompetence so we scheduled a May 22nd back surgery with another doctor. For almost seven days, I was in pain, could barely sleep, walk, eat, go to the bath room or do all things I was able to do easily before the pain management doctor touched me. I had no idea what the next doctor was going to do to me. The orthopedic surgeon we chose to do my back surgery may have been good a few years ago, but he's
unacceptable now. The orthopedic surgeon said my operation would take about three hours. Almost eight hours later, he emerged from the operating room looking like he had been in a terrible accident. He pulled my wife aside and told her "We almost lost him, but he's a strong man and he'll come back. He lost a lot of blood (1200 ML) and there were more complications than I anticipated. He didn't mention the fact that he cut into my nerve sack of my central nervous system and I lost a lot of spinal fluid along with a lot of blood. I also had a huge wound on my forehead from the bandage that they used to hold all the tubes going into my mouth. The wound was about six and one half inches long by one and a half inches wide. The wound got infected on the second day and my wife asked the nurse to check it out. The nurse never got closer than eight feet away from me and said it didn't look abnormal. My wife was worried I may get sepsis (a very dangerous bacteria) and I should have the wound cleaned out at the very least. My doctor finally came in to check on me three days later and I told him about how the staff was neglecting me and I should be moved out of the room I shared with a 93 year old man who happened to have altzheimer's disease and was making himself defecate with his fingers. While doing this disgusting act, he would moan and curse as if he were the only person in the room. I thought I was in Hell. My doctor said he would get right on moving me (I wasn't able to eat because I was so disgusted). A day and a half later, they moved me into my own private room. My appetite came back and I was quite hungry and ordered my dinner. I ordered cranberry chicken with broccoli, with apple pie for desert. I bit into the cranberry chicken and I found the only piece of gristle in the whole chicken. My left upper molar broke off immediately. I was shocked, but not surprised as my whole Sarasota Memorial Hospital experience was totally unacceptable. I was happy to finally leave the fifth day. When my doctor checked on me, he said I'd be walking in three days. I was falling down in three days and my right leg continued to buckle as time went on. I went to this doctor for over seven months as he was trying to make me believe my condition (with my back surgery) was improving. I knew my health was getting worse every week. He would push down on my leg after he told me to extend it and make believe he couldn't move my leg. He would say: "You're strong for a man your age!" I just looked at him in all knowing disbelief. He'd look away from me because he knew I knew the truth. My wife and I were fed up with his lying and wasting our time, so after almost eight months we marched into his office and demanded a second opinion. He sent us to a colleague of his, Dr Thomas Freeman. Dr Freeman worked at FSU and was very approachable and to the point. His first words were: "I don't want any part of this litigation." He told us after looking at the MRI's and EMG, that I had two cases; one against the pain med. doctor and one against the orthopedic surgeon. He said there was no doubt the pain med doctor damaged nerves, but the orthopedic surgeon really messed up when he cut into my nerve sack causing permanent scar tissue over the damaged nerves, along with the sloppy operation where I lost 1200 ML of blood. He said it was doubtful if he or anyone else could do anything to improve my condition, but I could get off the high dosages of narcotics by having a pain stimulator intalled in my back which would block out the pain electrically with wires. I did not want to hear this. He told me I walked into these incompetent doctors offices with little pain and I still had the ability to run, jump, and do many things the average human could only dream of and now I am stuck with being unable to do anything but walk with a cane and have people pick things up off the floor or ground for me because these two guys messed up! What's worse is I can't get an attorny to help me with these cases because no doctor wants to testify against his constituent in all of Florida. Any other state, if the same thing happened, I would be a millionaire instantly and the pain of knowing that I was permanently disabled wouldn't be so hard to take. The hard truth is: I made $40 an hour (when I worked) and my wife will make $8 - $10 an hour, and spend the same or more on child care. I won't be able to watch our very active, young, intelligent two and four year old sons, but we need money to survive. The system we live in simply won't let us survive. Up until now, I have been working (with a cane in one hand and a chain saw in the other), plus, we sold most of our things to pay our bills. I have $427.00 left and I'm having another back surgery tomorrow by a very competent doctor who worked on me before after a 60' fall onto concrete. This doctor who is going to correct the terrble job the previous surgeon did will give me all the rods and screws that are now coming loose and falling out (after only twenty months). I was electrocuted and died in 1994, was pulled forty feet out of a tree with a truck in 84, fell sixty feet and landed on concrete in 2002 and now this disaster in 2015! My life history should be in a book.
Tomorrow I will have another back surgery and I don't know what to expect. Many people are praying for me, but that doesn't pay my bills. Please send at least one dollar to help my family in this dire situation. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Michael Orr and Family
God Bless You.
This is a close up of the wound on my forehead. It took the staff at the hospital I stayed at three full days to even look at it. My left eye started to close and I couldn't see out of that eye. The fourth day, the IDA doctor came to see me. He cleaned the wound and gave me an antibiotic. The wound cleared up in three weeks.