Hi, my name is Teresa Uptain, and you may know me from Facebook or TikTok. This year my family has run into hard times. I have two children. We actually have been running too hard times for a couple of years, but now I can’t work, I really can’t work. I worked at CVS while on disability and Social Security, taking care of my two kids, and then I had a hurt neck. I had broken my neck back in 2007, flipped the car upside down, and when my daughter was a baby, we were both upside down in the car. I was more worried about her, and I let go of my seatbelt and broke my neck. The accident was not my fault. It was due to the weather. The roads were bad. It was Jamestown Road, and I was going to speed limit, but the roads were slick due to the first rain, and that was that. I ended up having surgery on my neck in 2011, and it was successful, but then I fell in 2016, falling towards my face, so I moved my head falling sideways, hurting my neck and causing permanent muscle damage and nerve damage to my neck and left arm. When I left CVS for the summer to take a break, I was going to return to a different line of work, whatever work I could that was easier on my body, but I ended up breaking my foot in the fall of 2021, so that put an end to find another job for a while.
I was out of work for a whole year, so I was on state disability and social security then, but I still had my running car, which I no longer have. And then, recently, I applied at Safeway, thinking I didn’t know what I was thinking, but I thought that the union would be good. They would take care of me, but it was hard work, harder work than CVS, and I got hurt, and now I have bulging discs in my neck that weren’t there before, and in my lower back bulging discs. There’s also mysterious pain in my middle back that no one has taken an MRI of as of yet, but my doctor believes it’s a compression fracture. I’m in so much pain, struggling financially, and always overdrawing my bank account just to put essentials in our apartment. I saw another lady use this not as a clutch or a handout but as a hand up, so I’m saying the same thing. I really appreciate it. Anything will help. Thank you.