Just Want to Start my Life From Zero

My name is Mike DeVivo. I am a 37-year-old man, single, living and working in Holland, MI. If you looked at my life from the outside, you would see what appears to be a very stable existence. My Facebook page would depict someone who has a fairly normal and enjoyable life.

I have worked for Barcodes, Inc., a Chicago-based company, for 10 years making a decent yet somewhat limited salary for a man my age. I have been lucky to have this job, and even luckier to have kept it, when you consider where my life path has taken me over the last 18 years.

Now for the part you can’t see from the outside…

I expected to be married, have children, a house and all the typical expectations of approaching middle age by now. However, this was not to be. Over these past 18 years, my life has been a kind of, “one step forward, two steps back”, existence that I have barely been able to manage let alone escape from. Much of that is due to the side effects (both medical and financial) of previous medical conditions, episodes, and treatments which I will detail below.

When I was 19 years old, a mass was discovered in my brain. This was not cancer, not a tumor of any kind, but rather a clump of blood vessels that were malformed. It was kind of a ticking time bomb that I was most likely born with, and it required immediate surgery since I was already suffering from fainting spells.

Timing for something like this is, of course, never good, but in this case it was truly the worst. I had just started a new full-time job working for a metal forging company. My uncle, who worked there, had gotten me the job. For a 19-year-old, it was a great salary with great benefits, and it was “Step 1” in allowing me to move forward with the building of my adult life.

However, the company had a 90-day waiting period for health insurance to kick in. This was before some of the more recent changes in the healthcare industry that took place over the last 15 years. I was about 30 days into that 90-day period when I was diagnosed. As a result, I had to go into this surgery with no insurance of any kind. Too old to be on my parents’ plan and 60 days away from having my own insurance.

I spent approximately 4 weeks in the hospital prior to the surgery and an additional 2 weeks following the 5-hour surgery. The surgery itself was deemed a partial success in that the malformed blood vessels were mostly removed, and the affected part of my brain was mostly repaired. There were remaining vessels that would have been too invasive and too dangerous to attempt repair. The years that followed were a bit of a nightmare depending on “when” you saw me. The medical bills I was left with totaled nearly $150,000.00 and, obviously, I lost my job… no surprise there.

For several years I suffered from major seizures as a result of the surgery itself. These were “grand mal” seizures, the worst you can have, and they are devastating to the body. In fact, my father, who witnessed these seizures, was amazed that I survived at all. The seizures could be days apart and sometimes hours apart. There was nothing that could be done for these except to call an ambulance and go to the hospital to receive an IV of anti-seizure medication. I was already taking anti-seizure meds and still take them to this day and will most likely be taking them for the rest of my life.

These “episodes” resulted in unexpected time off from my jobs and, because of their frequency, resulted in the loss of several jobs. I can’t say I blame my employers for that.

There are also several mental and psychological side effects that I live with to this day as a result of the surgery. This is going to sound strange but the two most striking things I suffer from are a highly elevated feeling of empathy and an extreme feeling of guilt.

You wouldn’t think extreme empathy would be a bad thing, but when I witness the suffering of others around me, no matter who they were or what that suffering entailed, it would trigger a deep depression in me that would last sometimes for days. The realization that I couldn’t help them out of their predicament was completely debilitating to me.

I feel guilty when others are trying to help me. Receiving presents or financial help would be the most difficult thing to handle. Quite ironic considering you’re reading this on GoFundMe. It is so bad that I have, at times, skipped Christmas time with my family because I felt I wasn’t worthy of their gifts.

Other side effects range from a total lack of comprehension when I read, great difficulty with short-term memory, easily overwhelmed by managing the most basic of living situations and constant feelings of inadequacy.

The comprehension and memory issues became especially evident when I started college.

With my recovery progressing and being employed once more, I decided to apply for financial aid through FAFSA (which I got) and then enrolled in DeVry to start my studies. I knew I wanted to go into the multimedia sector (which had always been an interest of mine) and was absolutely thrilled to be accepted, and I prepared to start my studies and move on to the next chapter in life.

For those of you who are not familiar with the DeVry program, it is basically an accelerated, fast-track program that gets you your degree in 3 rather than 4 years. The rules of this type of program are rather strict… miss more than one or two sessions and you’re done. Each of my classes was structured to be completed in 6 weeks. This was when the lack of comprehension, as a result of my surgery, became incredibly evident. I couldn’t retain any information whatsoever. This coupled with the seizures completely took me out of the game and, eventually, out of the DeVry program.

I was then left with a ton of student debt that was intended to pay for an education I was never able to continue with or cope with.

I tried applying for disability (which is what was required to be able to be forgiven for the student debt) but, guess what, when they saw an outwardly healthy man walk through the doors of their government office… it’s very hard to be convinced that this man is disabled. Basically, I wasn’t disabled enough in their eyes, and this has always been the bane of those suffering from any type of illness that is brain-related or a mental illness in general.

My disability, despite being very real and debilitating, was only “physically” occurring intermittently; however, the psychological aspects of it were there 24/7… but the psychological side is invisible to others and therein lies the difficulty in obtaining any kind of help through government programs. But when these conditions presented themselves, it was devastating to every aspect of my life. After each setback, I’d recover, dust myself off and attempt to get back into normal life. Until the next seizure came along.

These days, the seizures are far less frequent and, when they do occur, they are much milder than those from, say, 15 years ago. But when they occur, they still shut down every part of my life for a few days.

In the years following my brain surgery, I worked very hard to rebuild my finances and my credit. I was constantly praying that the seizures, when they occurred, would be manageable to the point of not affecting my current employment. This, of course, was wishful thinking since there is nothing “manageable” about seizures… they happen when they happen. It was especially distressing and embarrassing when they occurred at my place of employment.

But, despite all this, I found that as the years went by, I slowly started to build everything back up from what was nothing.

Then… cancer.

Three years ago, I discovered a lump on one of my testicles. This time, it wasn’t just a convenient clump of malformed blood vessels. I was diagnosed with Stage 2 Testicular Cancer.

On November 20th of 2020, I had to have the affected testicle completely removed. Weeks later I started a regiment of chemotherapy… with the hopes that this would be the end of it. However, after the chemo was completed, CAT scans showed that the cancer had spread to lymph nodes in my abdomen.

On July 18th, 2021, I went into the University of Chicago Medical Center to have 65 lymph nodes removed from my abdomen. This was a major surgery that took many weeks to completely recover from. But, as of the writing of this document, I am now cancer free.

This time, of course, I had insurance and was quite grateful that 80% of all my medical bills were covered… the problem is the 20% left over. As hard as it may be to believe, I am still suffering and dealing with the effects of the financial situation that started all those years ago as a result of my first surgery. Sometimes it’s laughable, in the obscenest of ways.

My student loans went to collections. My medical bills went into collection and now the medical bills from my most recent situations are now in collections. I have suffered further setbacks from wage garnishments which just further worsens the situation.

Recently and luckily, medical bills can no longer be used against your credit score until, of course, they get turned over to collection agencies. It is and still is largely impossible for me to procure credit of any kind. Those high-interest credit cards that almost anyone can get… I can’t. Buying a home… forget about it. The car that I drive was purchased at such a high rate of interest and high monthly payment, I feel it will be forever to pay it off. And that’s assuming the constant garnishments don’t cause me to lose it. I have NEVER known a life without constant financial struggle.

These days, my hair has grown back, and my scars have healed, but the collateral damage is worse than it’s ever been. I am financially destroyed and forever behind the eight ball. I no sooner fix one thing and another thing pops up. It’s still not certain if I will be able to father my own children, but hopefully, that will be a part of my future.

Before I close, I want to make clear that I can provide any and all documentation and photos to verify everything contained herein.

The funding I receive will be used solely to pay off medical debt and college loan debt that is currently in collections and has reached levels that are simply impossible to ever get paid down. Just bringing me to near zero will be enough for me to begin living the life I’ve been working so hard to attain for the last 20 years.

Believe me when I tell you, I am not looking to profit from this. I’m just hoping to work my way up to ZERO. I would be overjoyed to simply be AT ZERO!!!

I thank you all in advance and I look forward to finally being able to start building the humble life I always hoped I would be living by now.

Mike