Help Melissa Get to Treatment

My name is Melissa Lewis, and this is my story:

”This is a letter describing my personal experiences with Melissa Lewis, specifically discussing her history of Eating Disorder and what seems to me to be, at present, an acute episode of mental and emotional crisis secondary to a series of ongoing and prior traumas.

In short, it is clear that right now, she needs help.

Melissa has a long and documented history of ED, which should speak for itself, but she has contacted me about her current struggles with it several times over the last two years. I’m no expert, but based on the timing of these contacts, I suspect that this condition is aggravated by prolonged periods of distress such as those caused by the aftermath of Melissa’s experiences of violent assaults by both white supremacist gang members, the Portland Police, and BORTAC (the Federal division of Border Patrol), all of which are video documented and well-known.

In pursuit of her function as a journalist, Melissa has been serially stalked, harassed, directly threatened, and mentioned on “kill lists” published widely by extremists and shared all over the internet. Her father, a doctor, was harassed at work. She has had community members voluntarily watch her under armed guard at times. These conditions were not always discrete; some were persistent and went on for nearly two years.

I have witnessed her engaging in dangerous self-harming activities and risk-seeking adverse behaviors, and I believe these are precipitated from this “perfect storm” of traumas and distress through which she has been struggling for quite some time now.

As if this mountain of trouble weren’t sufficient to explain her state of crisis, Melissa is also disabled, both physically and neurologically. She lives with epilepsy and Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (an incurable and progressive disease of the collagenous tissues) and the intersection of these two medical challenges is a hazardous one for obvious reasons.

Despite all of this, Melissa is trying hard to get real, professional help but, -so far- she has been confronted with nothing but hurdles, denials, and ultimately more distress from locally available resources. She just wants to get help. She is receptive to care and she is willing to do what it takes, but she needs guidance, and probably to be removed from her current circumstances for a time.

I want to be clear: I am worried about her safety. Melissa is in a constant state of distress, with regular lapses into medical and mental/emotional crisis. It is not safe or sustainable. Please help her.”

Medicaid will not cover any treatment that isn’t drug and alcohol related. I have a lot of issues to overcome, but this isn’t one of them. I have been rejected by the only eating disorder company in Oregon, and my insurance will not go out of state. I have no choice but to go out to state. I’m a political refugee (as the only program interested in my is Canadian) who is also a victim of America's broken health care system, and a victim of domestic terrorism tacitly permitted by the powers that be. The funds will be entirely used for my residential program costs, which can approach $80,000.