Medical Emergency, Permanent Paralysis &Disability

Hello All!! As some of you may know I've fought Nazis & racists on the streets of Fargo, Mpls & Leith, ND, Founded & am Director of UnityUSA an anti-racist 501c3 nonprofit; I've worked with people with disabilities in one capacity or another from direct care to case management to Director of a major service provider (MCRS) in Moorhead MN, owned & operated a successful small business restoring vintage furniture (2019-my injury), and I have been a Special Education teacher and tutor for 10 years; I've long advocated and volunteered in the substance abuse field & now I must, humbly, ask for your help...Thank you so much for taking the time to visit this page and for your consideration in making a donation to assist me during this very difficult time and the huge financial burden I now face moving forward. I'll try to make this as brief as possible, but here's a synopsis of the last 2 months of my life: It all began when I took a tumble down a friend's deck stairs and landed on the cement driveway, giving myself a concussion and a couple broken teeth and some scrapes. Four days later I awoke with a terrible pain in my back and went to the emergency room at St. Cloud hospital. I was told after a CT scan that I had a broken rib and an infection for which they provided me with antibiotics and miralax. Over the next 5 weeks I returned to the emergency room four times and to a family practice physician once with extreme pain in my back. I had x-rays taken and a cursory examination and each time I was sent home with a diagnosis of bowel obstruction and told to take miralax; despite my repeated pleas for help with the extreme pain in my mid-back. After 6 weeks of this severe back pain and repeated visits to the ER... On a Friday afternoon, I stood up out of a recliner and realized my legs felt a little wobbly, fast-forward 18 hours and I had completely lost the ability to walk and the pain in my back was so severe that I immediately called the ambulance. I was taken to St. Cloud hospital ER, again, at which time they completed an MRI and a couple more CT scans and found out that I had an abscess on my spinal column, caused by a staph infection, that had been doing much internal damage over the previous 6 weeks. The damage done by the abscess to my spinal cord, I'm told by Doctors here in St Cloud, is considerable and permanent. I will, most likely, be living the rest of my life paralyzed from the t7/t8 vertebrae down. To say that this was totally unexpected is an understatement. This was, and still is, completely out of my wheelhouse but I plan on putting in a lot of hard work to get as healthy and to recover as much as possible. I want to say thank you to all who have reached out and provided me with words of encouragement and support in the early days, I really appreciate it. It's helped me get through those pain-filled and emotionally draining early days, thank you all. I began an intensive physical therapy rehabilitation program on December 5th and after that I will need assistance of some sort for the rest of my life to complete daily cares and routines as well as the huge cost of purchasing adaptive equipment so that I will be able to be as independent and function as fully in society as possible. Dr. Collins, the head of the rehabilitation program in St. Cloud has shared with me that... "The #1 indicator of success for an individual with a newly acquired, permanent disability is their ability to financially access and purchase adaptive equipment." Adaptive equipment is super expensive but also crucial to an individual's ability to access their environment and to live as full a life as possible. Adaptive equipment is only one of the many totally unexpected expenses I now face, some of which include: 1. a ton of medical/hospital expenses; 2. Loss of income/loss of my small, yet quite successful, small business; 3. Moving/storage expenses; 4. Inability to pay bills that will be coming due (until I can do some type of work again which won't be soon as I have a lot of healing, recovery, and rehab left before I can get back to some type of work and become as independent and self -sufficient as I can be) And I'm sure there is more that my tired brain is unable to think of right now . All this being said, I want you to know that I am looking forward to healing, working hard, getting better and getting back out into the community and giving back. I plan on being active in the disability awareness theater as well as doing whatever I can in whatever way possible to help those who may be facing similar circumstances. As I am right now, I want to be there for those in need because so many of you have been there for me during my time of need. This help I'm asking for now WILL be paid forward. I appreciate ALL of you, more than I could ever express through simple words, but please know that I love each and every one of you.

Thank you all!

Much love and so very much Appreciation & Thanks!

'Bubba' Scott