Michele’s Story

Hello, my name is Michele. I’m 42 years old. I’m a mother of a 12-year-old son (Brandon) and a 20-year-old daughter (Lauren) who is in college. I moved from Palm Beach County to Indian River County, Florida in 2016. I was in a very physically abusive relationship and I had to leave everything and get out with my kids. I moved in with my mom and dad and I didn’t have anything my ex-husband even took my car. As soon as I moved, it was a fresh start. I went and worked at the closest place to my house I could walk to and it was McDonald’s as a cashier. I worked a lot of hours and a lot of overtime and I was made a manager of overnight. I bought a brand new 2018 Toyota Corolla. I felt like myself again. My divorce went through. I was happy. I used to work a lot of crazy hours, in two days I worked over 30 hours I was so tired and this is how my seizure started. I wanted to go straight home and go to bed but a girl that I used to work with overnight she lived in a bad neighborhood so I waited for her to get off an hour later and I took her home. She knew I was very tired but I didn’t want her walking in the nighttime to her apartment and she said to me when you get home please call me and let me know you’re okay. Well, I never made it home. I was told that I ran over a curb and flipped my car three times. I hit an F-350 head-on and a light poll. I was taken to the nearest trauma hospital. I had staples in my head and I was in a coma for 4 days.

When I woke up, I just woke up and didn’t remember anything. I saw all these needles and wires in me and I just said get me out of here. I don’t even remember calling my dad, but he came and got me. A few days later I was at work and I was trying to move my neck and I couldn’t. I went back to the hospital and found out my neck was broken my C5, but I dealt with it. I wore a brace. I would say 3 weeks later I started having grand mal seizures. I had a few at work and thank God I didn’t fall into the grease or on the grill. I had insurance at the time and I went through my regular doctor and he got me a neurologist and they did some EEGs and some other brain scans and found out that from the accident I had severe head trauma where I had epilepsy the left side of my brain. My memory is missing and I have ADHD bad they said I was having seizures every 2 weeks. They were putting me on different medications. I felt like a guinea pig. I was on some medications that made me so depressed. I was like why am I even here. Finally, after a year and having seizures basically every two weeks I went on Depakote, and it made me gain 60 lbs, but it controlled the seizures so that I wasn’t having them every two weeks. Finally, I went seizure free for a little over 6 months.

I was at work one day when I went back to being a veterinary technician and the girl I work with said you don’t look right. She goes sit down I said no I’m going to go home I got to go cook dinner. And then when I was on my way home, a cop pulled up to me at the gas station when I was pumping gas and said that he got a call that I was driving on the sidewalk. He checked my license, he checked me, he said go ahead, and go. I remember passing the light by my house and that’s all I remember. I went across traffic. I guess almost hit a bridge and flew airborne with my car and hit a parked car, thank God with nobody in it. I never knew about focal seizures before this.

I don’t have a job anymore because my boss made me resign because he couldn’t wait for me he needed his technician there to help with the surgeries and assist with patients. He gave me a couple of days of severance pay and that was it. I am so broke I don’t know what I’m going to do. I filed for Social Security disability but they said I could take at least 6 months to find out because there are so many people applying. And I applied for food stamps and Medicaid, but I haven’t heard anything about the Medicaid, but I was approved for the food stamps which isn’t much but it’s better than nothing. I can’t afford my prescriptions.

This is the picture of my car that I got into the accident with. This gave me seizures. I had angels watching me that night.