Welcome to the Tweed Trends podcast. Hey, Evette, what's trending today? Hey, I'm Evette, hey, girl. And you are tuned in to Tweed Trends.
It's the quickest way to find out what's trending today. Today is International Day of Persons with Disabilities, and I have got a great interview for you. So let's get started. Hey, there, and welcome back to Tweed Trends.
Today is International Disability Day, and I have a great interview for you, but before we get into that, I just want to say that the largest minority group in the world is people with disabilities. And any of us can join at any time. Like, people are born into this group as well as the fact due to accidents, and just all age, many of us, if not most, will end up in the category or being labeled as disabled. And with that, there are four basic categories that disabilities fall under.
There's intellectual, physical, sensory, and mental. Now, disability on a whole is not black and white. Just because two people have the same disability, it does not mean that they have the same experiences. So I feel like we can learn a lot from talking to just about every and anyone we meet that has been labeled disabled, because there's always something to learn.
So with that in mind, I want to introduce you to my guest. His name is Derek Evans, and he is one of my oldest friends. I honestly don't even know how we even became friends. I just remember you at my birthday parties, all of a sudden.
Our dads work together, so that's probably really what the original connection was our dads work together. Okay, that makes a whole lot more sense. Derek, I'm bringing you on the show today because you are one of the people you were not born disabled. You came into this group, and so if you don't mind, could you tell us a little bit about your story and how this came about?
Okay, I'll fast forward a little bit. I had some complications from my diabetes. I was feeling real bad, and I went to sleep, and my roommate came home, and she was like, did you see the bottom of your foot? And I was like, no, because I can't see the bottom of my foot.
But it was real bad. I ended up going to the hospital. We went to the emergency room. This was back in 2013, April 13th.
They went and said, let's go do some x-rays. And then when they came back into the room, because I was having, I was dealing with a whole lot of things. And I didn't realize how bad my foot was infected. And actually, I was thinking that I was having some, I don't want to say seizures, but I was trembling and shaking, and here's the thing.
With me being diabetic, I was thinking that it was because my sugar was low, because some of the same symptoms of my sugar being low was what was happening to me. And so, I was sitting there, and the doctor came in the room, and he saw that he said, well, I hate to tell you this, but we're going to have to amputate your foot in the morning. Just like that. In the morning?
There's nothing we can do. It's too far gone. We need to do it to save your life. You only get one life.
I can walk again. And so, we went into it. We amputated my foot, and then it was there. And actually, I was very close.
And so, this is the thing about when you get septic like that, actually, you can die. And once it gets all in your body, there's nothing that doctors can do. As a matter of fact, one of the doctors, I saw him about, because I was in a hospital about 50 days. I saw him about a month later, and he said, you know, he just, when he gave me the news, he just couldn't believe, you know, the way he did everything, and then he said, he said, that I was three days from dying.
Wow. So, I was three days from dying. I always had a great spirit about it, because I was not, you know, what I was independent. But here's the thing, what you don't realize is that you can't do the things you used to do.
You know, your world does change. Right. And you know, unfortunately, in life, sometimes, you don't realize the struggle that people go through. When you don't, when it doesn't affect you, and we are actually in a world like that.
So, there's a lot of times people don't get behind causes until something happens to them. And then they, when they, that's when they care about it, what have you. I really learned to respect a lot of people for it. Like I said, who have dealt with these things their whole life, because it is a lot of work.
There's a process that you go through even to get the way, because it's not like they amputate your foot. And the next day you go in and you get molded for a foot and then, you know, a week later, you walk it, you know, it doesn't work like that. Right. You have to learn to adapt.
It was a struggle at first, only learning how to do the things. I always had a puzzle about look on it. And I think that's what helped me get through. So, here's the thing.
I looked at my other foot too. And they said, well, there's a possibility that they might have seen some infections, whatever. There's an effort. And the doctor, who did my surgery, then said, you know what?
You might just go ahead and do the other one too, because you know what's going to happen. You might just go ahead and do that. But the other doctor I had, who was my original doctor, him and the infectious disease people, they said, look, this is what we're going to do. We're going to treat it.
We're going to give you some antibiotics, what have you. And we're going to see if we can save it. I ended up, so that went a couple of years. And then what happened is other things, diseases that becomes affected by diabetes, cause it's called shock hose.
It makes your bones brittle. It ended up happening. It got to be so bad that the doctors just decided to give me a fixator. It's called a fixator.
It's called a fixator. And if you ever saw the horror movie with the guy who had the pain that was going off the head, it was so fixator. It fits on your leg. And you got pains going all throughout whatever.
That's the whole of that place. I learned to be dependent on the left leg and then I got the fixator. It's not supposed to be way better and that's what's doable. But it's hard to do that.
Honestly, I'm the big guy. If I was lighter, it'd be different. I'm the big guy. So some of the pains and stuff started to, we're breaking.
I was supposed to have the surgery to replace the pants. The nurse came in the room and the nurse said, well, Mr. Evan, everything was going to be fine. Since you've gone through amputation before, you've probably done a few of everything.
So that 35 minutes before, that's what I found out they were amputating my leg. Wow. And that's what I found out that they were going to be amputating my other leg. But I might have said, you know what, she's right.
I've been through this before and I'll do it again. So we did it. And that's why I wasn't that. And that was a different challenge because I had a different type of leg.
But I went to the physical therapy and, you know, we learned how to do things and, you know, we went from there. So do they have like advocates to walk you through the process because you literally went from one day, your regular Derek. And then the next day, they're like, all right, time to go get your foot off. How was that process to go?
Like, was a difficult process? And I tell you what, so here's where I was blessed. The hospital that I was at, they had a company called Chamberlain. They worked in concert with the hospital because ultimately they want to get their money at that time.
You know, I had a job and they didn't have insurance. They didn't offer us insurance. So to get insurance because I was already diabetic. That's enough.
That's another horse. That's another story for another day. I want you to bring me on there so we can talk about that thing because I just feel like it is it really is a shame. Let me do say this right now.
I think part of that might have contributed somewhat to my situation because here's the thing. When you don't have health insurance and you go to the doctor and I'm not taking anything away from nurse practitioners or whatever this but you don't see the doctor. Your time's when I came in and I feel like she did all that she could do. When I got Medicare or when I got the Affordable Care Act first, when I got that, I was able to the doctor.
It was a whole back and I got to see the doctor. But anyway, get back to Chamberlain. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I got to track.
I apologize. That's not the bad that that that is. It's there to me right now to. Chamberlain doesn't take the case unless they know that they're going to win.
Usually they tell you when it comes down to disability, which I don't understand that the UC say it could take around two years. It usually takes you to get rejected two times. So if you talk to here's the thing to appease my family, I did actually call a lawyer. And what they said was, have you been denied to the day like if I wouldn't even deny it, you're talking to me.
So that was that. So the first time we went to the process, what have you and it was denied. Right. Really?
Yes. And we went to the process again. I went. I go see one of their doctors, a doctor saw me and the second time I got approved, which is black.
So that is almost basically unheard of. But I promise you, most people it takes them around two to three years. And that's, you know, that and I don't know how to expect people to live that long, depending on people or have you. That is that's how the process normally works.
So I was lucky. It only took me about nine months. I was not like I was blessed. Wow.
That is amazing. That that blows me away to think that, especially if just looking at your story on the surface to say that you went literally just to the hospital to find out why am I not feeling okay. Then coming out, having your foot amputated and then you still have to work up to the point where you can receive a leg. You know, you don't get the foot immediately after having the surgery.
And so what are you really supposed to do in the time being that makes no sense to me. Do you know of ways that people can try to help to make this situation better? I know one thing for you definitely is voting. I know that you're all into the politics and everything and knowing what types of bills are coming up and things like that.
But so how can how can we help because clearly there's a problem with this whole process? You're right. I think we have to put pressure on the people that we elect to do the job for us. Voting is not enough.
And I think that's where a lot of us fail. Sometimes that like I said, we vote people and we elect them and then we go on about our lives. But we have to stay involved and look at things. Sometimes you look at things that are greater than yourself.
And like I said, the larger problem is I think our health care system in general. That's really the larger problem. And don't get me wrong. I think that what really happened with the system as far as the disability goes is that it was viewed so many years ago.
People had friends and the system and whatever they had to write them off. And so there are a lot of things that need to be corrected there. And what happens is unfortunately, the system like this is that the good happens with the bad. I think that ultimately, we just have to put people in there who really care and who really look at it.
What's going on? That's probably the biggest thing we can do. Thank you so much for sharing your story and being so transparent about the ins and outs and downs of becoming disabled and how you have allowed your faith and your family to get you through it. So I just want to say thank you.
I really appreciate it. Well, thank you so much for having me. I hope you enjoyed today's interview and I hope that has sparked something within you to decide to stop and have that conversation with the person that you see every day or a co worker or whoever it is in your life that has been labeled as disabled. You know, start that conversation.
Find out what it's like to see life through their eyes and then hopefully deep down inside it sparked something for you to then decide to want to be an advocate, whether it's for something in your community so that they can have better access or maybe it's dealing with health care and trying to start that fight to make sure that everyone has adequate health care. All right. Well, I hope you have a great weekend. Definitely check me out on Twitter, IG, Facebook and YouTube at Hey, that and this entire interview will be going up by the weekend.
So check out the weekend on YouTube and you can see this entire interview that I had with Derek. And like I said, hopefully it has sparked something within you to be an advocate for persons with disabilities.