In early June, Amran Bilal was at work when she found that she could not stand.
For the following half year, she was in and out of the hospital recovering from the rare disease behind this disturbing experience, and in an interview a few days ago, she spoke hopefully of returning soon to work so she could get caught up on rent payments.
Two days later, however, she said in another interview, her employer suggested to her she would be losing her job.
Bewildered, Bilal felt a devastating blow to cap off a devastating year. She said she now fears that — despite the help she got covering rent in recent months from resources like the Chattanooga Times Free Press Neediest Cases Fund — if she cannot work soon, she will be evicted from her apartment of five years.
Bilal’s troubles began around March. Her job as a medical technician was going well; she even received an award at work, she said. But then her right leg went numb and started dragging. In the coming weeks, she sporadically took work off because of this strange paralysis, but she couldn’t figure out what the problem was.
Then on June 7, she said, she was sitting with a psychiatric patient, and at the end of her shift found she could not move or swallow.
Bilal said the subsequent medical examination revealed she had Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare disease in which someone’s immune system attacks their own nerves.
As Bilal received treatment over the next six months, she could not work and fell deep in debt. But without food stamps or other officially vetted signifiers of poverty, she said she found herself ineligible for assistance from many institutions in Chattanooga.
Life events causing people to miss work — and thus, pay — is a common reason people need emergency financial help, Brittany Lockwood of the United Way of Greater Chattanooga said in a phone interview.
Studies show leave policies for U.S. paid workers lag behind those of most industrialized nations. Lockwood has seen many women who work part-time hourly positions take time off — unpaid — after they give birth and receive no income for weeks as they care for the baby. Meanwhile, when people are sick, weeks may go by before they can start seeking help from local institutions, some of which themselves may take many additional weeks to respond, she said.
Relative to many places in the region, Chattanooga has a robust organizational support network, Lockwood said, but the funds and staffing remain inadequate.
“The need is really, really great,” she said, adding that for someone who pays month-to-month rent, just qualifying for help is not always enough; a long wait time and an unsympathetic landlord can result in an eviction.
In recent months, Bilal said, she was able to get rent help from the city of Chattanooga, from Northside Neighborhood House and from United Way of Greater Chattanooga, which paid her through the Times Free Press Neediest Cases fund.
The fund was started in 1914 by Adolph Ochs, then the publisher of The Chattanooga Times. It receives donations from Times Free Press readers, and the money is administered and distributed to individuals and families in need by the United Way of Greater Chattanooga and partner agencies. Recipients must be working or on a fixed income and be able to demonstrate ongoing stability and self-sufficiency after receiving Neediest Cases funds. According to United Way figures, the Neediest Cases Fund took in more than $57,000 last year.
In Bilal’s case, the institutional rent support helped stave off disaster, as did the help she got from her daughter, who left nursing school to care for her.
Early this month, Bilal’s dark saga seemed to be coming to an end. She got out of the hospital — her daughter took her out for a meal that day — and in the past couple of weeks, she has been able to move without a walker.
Her troubles were not gone, however. In a phone call Tuesday, Bilal said she was still months behind on rent and worried she would get evicted despite a long record of on-time payments.
“It looks like I’m going to have to pack up and just go to the shelter because I’m not getting paid for my job because they haven’t even started the long-term disability yet,” she said.
Yet she also expressed some hope; she reported just having passed a physical necessary to start work again and said that after undergoing a cognitive skills exam, she anticipated getting back on the shift schedule soon.
“I have to get back to work,” she said, adding, “I worked too hard to be just sitting at home being completely paralyzed. I’m grateful that I’ll be back to work.”
Then, in a follow-up call two days later, Bilal was distraught. Her employer had just informed her it was “separating” from her, she said. She didn’t understand what this meant — the health care facility representative said something about the allotted time transpiring with her being out of work, Bilal said.
“I’m behind on my rent,” she said, breaking into tears. “I was planning on going into work this week!”
She said she is seeking clarity and wants to fight, but for now she suspects she has no future in the apartment that has been her home for five years.
“I’m going to have to start packing up,” she said, “I don’t think my landlord is going to even wait another month.”
Contact Andrew Schwartz at aschwartz@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6431.