Saboor

I grew up in a place where little was plenty, and kindness was currency. We didn't see our poverty because we were rich in people, ideas, in making something from nothing. But as I aged, I saw clearly that what we lacked was not simply cash, but access.

As a child I was always tired. Doctors guessed: epilepsy, anemia, and many other things and none were right. The truth was sleep apnea. The fix sounded simple, but not when you can't reach it. The specialist was in Richmond. For a boy in Petersburg that was another planet. Toll roads cost money we didn't have. Calls had long distance fees. And we had no steady transportation. This caused me to miss visit after visit. I stayed sick. I just learned to live foggy, half awake, fighting my own body.

Time rolled on. I became a husband, a father, a man trying to provide—but still trapped. Even with insurance, I carried that same old poverty mindset. I ignored my health. I thought pain was just part of life. I nodded off at work. Got written up. I gained weight. My body quit me. Then one day, I blacked out behind the wheel.

The wreck should have ended me. It didn’t. Somehow, I walked three miles in the dark, bleeding, shaking, ashamed, looking for help. That night, my wife refused to let me keep living half-alive. She pushed me to get care. And when I finally did, the answer was right there all along: a machine, a mask, a flow of air. That was it. The line between barely existing and finally living.

But here’s what haunts me—I lost decades to something easily treatable. Not because I didn’t care, but because I couldn’t get to the right place at the right time. And I know I’m not the only one.

There are still people everywhere, parents, elders—suffering quietly, not because the cure doesn’t exist, but because it’s out of reach. Lack of transportation almost took my life. Now, 35 years later, I’m fighting to make sure no one else loses years like I did.

This is my mission. My purpose. My fight.