My Back Injury Led to Poverty

Many people ridicule those who are homeless, living on the street. They call them "society's rejects". They say these people just do not want to work, that they would rather live off "other people's hard-earned dollars". There was a time I, too, wondered how a person could end up homeless or living on welfare. How could they let such a thing happen? I now know there are many paths to these outcomes. It is too easy to end up living in poverty, these days. Having a job or career is no guarantee of job-security. I once had a good job. I was a Certified Nursing Assistant, working swing shift in a nursing home. I wasn't wealthy, but I certainly wasn't poor. My back injury has caused me to live in poverty. It didn't happen all at once. It happened in stages, one thing leading to another, spiraling out of my control.

The beginning of the domino effect was in 2002. I was transferring a patient from his bed to his wheelchair. His normally strong right leg suddenly buckled, and I found myself holding dead weight. My lower back popped, as I tried to keep him from hitting the floor. The charge nurse on duty sent me to the clinic. The doctor there would not allow me to go back to work. Therefore, instead of working and drawing a paycheck, I was going to a chiropractor and taking pain medications. I was off work for over a month, getting behind on bills, having my phone shut off, and running low on food. The effects of going to a chiropractor for six weeks led to worse damage in my lower back.

Finally, when I had reached the point where I could not feel anything in my left leg, the worker's comp doctor subjected me to an MRI. From this, he saw the extent of the damage. In August 2003, just before my daughter's fourth birthday, I went into surgery. That's when my Worker's Compensation checks finally began coming to me. I was able to start catching up on things. Some of my bills, unfortunately, had already gone into collections, and were beyond my being able to pay on them. While I was trying to catch up on bills I was behind on, I had very little left over to buy food. However, according to Health and Welfare, I had too much coming in to qualify for food stamps. My car payment and bill payments did not qualify as "necessary items". Meanwhile, the agent from Worker's Comp was doing as little as necessary for me. My doctor had told her and me that he wanted me to get completely out of the medical field. He had put me on a fifty-pound lifting restriction. Worker's Comp paid for my chiropractor visits, the surgery, physical therapy, and medications. However, they refused to listen to the doctor, arguing with him that I should still be able to do something as a C.N.A. Therefore, they did not retrain me for a new field. What they did was pressure me to go back to work.

In March 2004, my checks stopped. Once again, I got behind on my rent, being unable to pay the full amount every month. I searched for work, checking the newspaper every day, and visiting the employment office twice a week. People looked at my work history and my credentials, and thought I would be a good worker. After all, I am med-certified. Then they saw that I had already sustained a serious back injury, had surgery, and had severe lifting restrictions. None wanted to hire me. More bills went into collections. If it hadn't been for the small death benefits my daughter gets each month, I would have had no money coming in, at all.

Finally, in July 2004, I was able to get a job with a home health agency. My part-time client needed nothing more than light housekeeping. There was no heavy lifting involved, no patient lifting or transfers. Within a month of the time I began working, the collectors hit me with garnishments. They took the twenty-five percent they were allotted. I had little enough money, as it was. I had to learn to live on much less than what I was accustomed to having. The collectors were not able to get enough from my paychecks to satisfy the judgments against me. Next thing I knew, they had cleaned out my checking account. Because my bank balance was suddenly at zero, my rent check bounced. This had been the third time I had gotten behind on rent, and this time it was insufficient funds. I didn't have the money to pay my landlord, so I lost my apartment.

Thanks to that fiasco, no one else wanted to rent to me. I was only checking into places I knew I would be able to afford. My daughter and I lived in my van, taking showers at my mother's, for two months. I happened to find one man who had just bought a rundown house he was in the process of fixing up. He was desperate to bring in new tenants immediately. The rent was more than I could afford, but I could not keep my daughter on the street. I took out finance loans and payday loans to cover the deposit and rent for the first month. It is an old house, so it takes more to keep it cool in hot weather. My electric bill takes most of my remaining income. Unfortunately, this put me deeper in debt. I'm trying to cover current bills, work on old bills, keep up with rent, which takes three-fourths of my net income, and am trying to stay in school. I can't use my checking account, because I can't afford to have everything cleaned out again. I have to keep gas in the van, to get to and from work, and it's a gas-guzzler. I still don't have enough to buy food, so we're living on food boxes from charity organizations.

Two years ago, I would not have believed I would be living like this. I had a great job and a nice place to live and raise my daughter. I have never been one of those who mocked the poor, but could never understand how some people could let such things happen to them. I know, now, why so many are homeless. I have learned, through this "series of unfortunate events", why some people end up on welfare. My back injury truly has caused me to live in poverty.