Help Larissa Overcome Health and Financial Struggles

If you previously donated to my CaringBridge site/page, please contact them to refund you immediately - they only use those funds to run the website, which is not cool.

I use Venmo (Larissa92102) and PayPal ( LarissaDACM at G mail dot com ) primarily. FYI - GoFundMe takes fees from each donation of " 2.9% + $0.30 per donation ", so if you want to have a specific amount coming to me, there is the math I found.

I was extremely nervous to start one of these, because I hate asking for help or money. But... rent and bills will be due soon, and I am presently unable to drive or get back to work. So, I need assistance.

On August 25, 2024 I had a seizure at an office in Pacific Beach that I help out at. A coworker-friend happened to be there, called an ambulance, and they took me to Scripps Memorial Hospital. They told me there that I had a benign brain tumor that had slowly grown over the past 20 years, and that I'd need brain surgery, aka a craniotomy, and on August 30, 2024, Dr. Bruno Flores handled that surgery (successfully). On September 6, 2024, they transported me to Amaya Springs Healthcare Center (a skilled nursing facility), and I was discharged on September 28, 2024.

I'd gone through two small seizures near the end of 2023 and wasn't as concerned about them as I should have been. They involved passing out at my apartment, which I related to overworking myself at grad school, because getting a dual Masters/Doctorate in both acupuncture and Chinese medicine is hard. I was on my way to graduating, and had finished my academic coursework with only 140 patient hours to go, and in December 2023 I had to cold-turkey-quit my SSRI medication that I'd been on since 2015, due to my healthcare plan changing (from HealthNet to Medi-Cal). Having no idea how to do that, cold-turkey-quitting was really the only option, and I didn't realize how much of a terrible idea that was. A week or so later, I got expelled from school due to reasons that will not be discussed here. So on top of the lack of medication, I had to suddenly and unexpectedly deal with expulsion from what had been a five-and-a-half year journey into something that I put my life into making successful. It was heartbreaking, and I had no idea how to deal with that either, and began considering suicide quite seriously.

I lost access to financial aid due to this problem, could not get a job, and began a dark path into the deepest depression and anxiety that has ever been in my life. A second episode of serious suicidal consideration began, because I was running out of time to find money to pay rent or bills, was close to losing my apartment and my cats, and everything was a terrible mess. On top of this, I was dealing with intense grief related to my separation/divorce, which is not grief I will ever recover from.

In late February 2024 I was able to find a job with a housecleaning company, and began working 8-10 hours per day. This was extremely hard manual labor, and while the pay was decent, I knew it wasn't something I could keep up forever. About six weeks later, the owner said they didn't have any further clients, so I now had just enough money to move into a new apartment but with no idea how to handle things further. I started a program at a new school to get a certificate in Medical Billing and Insurance Coding, though that program would take about nine months, and I wasn't getting financial aid help from it in a way that I could live off of it.

I very recently got a job with a staffing agency in property management that placed me into a job paying about $19 per hour. The schedule was 8am to 5pm, then I'd have to come home and have online classes from 6pm to 10pm. I wasn't sleeping more than five or six hours a night, and wasn't really eating much at all because D E P R E S S I O N will eff you right up.

That job caught me up just enough to be able to pay rent, but after five weeks at the first job I quit because it was a place that handled federal Section 8 related housing, which was different than the high-end property they promised to get me into. The clients were ...not something my heart could handle, to put it bluntly, so I quit. The clients there broke my heart due to their own situations (many of whom came up from being homeless), so quitting was the only option. The staffing agency didn't currently have any new spots to place me in, so while I got a break from the 8-5 schedule, everything was very messy.

At this point I called a friend (who is a doctor of acupuncture and Chinese medicine) to say that I needed treatment immediately to help my mental health or my next step was to drive off the Coronado bridge. He helped me, and I also immediately found a doctor and a psychologist to help me. The person who I thought was a doctor got me on a new set of psych meds, and things started getting better. I only just this week found out that person is a nurse practitioner, and could not refill my meds that being in the nursing facility have meant I now need to take, so I'm hoping the newly found Family Health Centers can refill those meds before the weekend hits, because at that point I'll be out. If I don't take them, there is a solid chance of more seizures, which means there is a real possibility of my death. I am terrified.

While recovery is going well in certain ways, it is going slow in other ways. Cognitive and memory-related primarily, and the feelings related to this are beyond overwhelming. I am back at my apartment, and will get a day nurse for in-home health (including occupational and physical therapists), but I live alone (with my 3 cats), and it is difficult to do daily living actions as I transition back to "regular" life.

Here is a link I've been using for reference for personal aftercare: https://myhealth.alberta.ca/Health/aftercareinformation/pages/conditions.aspx?hwid=zy1337

Reading is hard. Writing is hard. Physical things are harder than digital things. Everything needs to go on a to-do list or it all becomes overwhelming in a way I can't explain. I'm on a variety of medications including a large dose of anti-seizure drugs, and now actively scared because certain things are out of my control. The rapid-cycling mood swings are intense, because I am forced to sit with my thoughts. It is nice when friends or helpers come over, because even if I take a nap during that time, I'm not alone... versus at 9PM, when I am most definitely alone. Being single does not help at all.

That said, I need so much help with all of this.

My goal for this is to acquire $10,000, so that I can cover rent and bills for a few months, and also get a lawyer for a lawsuit that needs to be handled (the details will not be discussed here). My rent is $2250, my bills are about $200 per month, food is about $400 per month, and a lawyer I've found has a retainer of $3500.

I don't yet have access to temporary disability through EDD or SSI, and the amount of work that takes will take me some time to both understand and acquire. Due to the complexity of a task like that, it is far harder for me than it should be. I end up crying because that's what this recovery does to me - crying out of nowhere, being joyful out of nowhere, being overwhelmed, trying hard... all the things.

I hope this never, ever, ever happens to anyone I know. Every day I thank the Universe for allowing that tumor to be benign, for not having cancer, and for not having this happen due to TBI/CTE or an accident. I'm also pleased to 1) not be dead and to 2) not be in a vegetable/comatose/alert-coma state. While I'm grateful beyond explanation for the friends that genuinely helped me during my stay at the hospital/nursing facility, they can't take care of me or pay for me every day, and it's silly to think that they can. They have their own lives.

So... that's that. This was a slightly-longer-than-short-version, which was hard to write for a number of reasons. I truly hope that people can help in any fashion, I'm happy I didn't die, and I thank you all.