My accident put my family in debt and it’s not over.

My name, as many of you might already know, is Macca Xinlei Lee. And if you know me, you'd know that only three months ago, I got into an almost fatal car accident and my injuries are anything but few.

I suffered multiple facial bone fractures, which had to subsequently be rebuilt through implants and reconstructive surgery, severe concussions, the loss of 5 teeth and brain damage that is, as of what they know now, causing me to have vision impairments – damage that the doctors know not whether these new deficiencies will ever decrease/worsen in severity nor if they are temporary/permanent. I have essentially no assurances that my vision problems are anything that I will ever recover from.

I survived and am trying to lead a normal life once again like I used to, but of course, such life-changing incidents never leave you, and most certainly comes back to haunt every once in a while. Psychological recovery is one thing – it's been a tough uphill mental battle as many of you have probably witnessed and heard from me; there were times I just wanted the pain to just all stop.

Now another momentous impediment shows up, standing well between my family and my way of ever resuming normal life ever again. Maybe it might not have been apparent to many who've ever gotten to know me, but I do not come from a good socioeconomic class at all. My parents have been working multiple jobs for decades, from dawn to nightfall, just to make ends meet – the type where our monthly situation means that all the money they make goes out the door in the form of bills at the end of the month.

Facing our gigantic bills incurred both in Bali and in Singapore, I was calculating how much money we would need to even possibly start paying them off, then I remembered that this isn't even the end of my costs. I don't even know how I'm going to pay for my MRI next week. I still have to get my root canals done, get more teeth removed due to the trauma I suffered and somehow still be able to afford to get new teeth somehow.

I'm only 25 years old. Everyone in my class is done with college now, but not me, I'm not. I still have to write a thesis and a giant research paper, while trying to resolve our financial problems and trying to look for a job somewhere.

I don't think I can express to you how much stress this puts me under, that I feel like I single-handedly ruined my family's life and my entire future – even if this event was not my fault, we still have to literally pay the consequences anyway.

I don't think I've ever been so truly at my wit's end, at the mercy of our economic system, and that's why I turned to crowdfunding. I didn't see any other way out of this, trying to not put my entire family in debt that we will spend the rest of our lives paying off. I managed to do my 4 years at Yale-NUS without incurring enormous student loans, and I thought that I wouldn't have to face such crippling debt at this age as a result. Clearly, I was wrong.

The amount that I'm trying to raise in this campaign is only a fraction of the actual bills I will actually have to repay. But it will definitely get me started on being able to actually move forward into the future with the upcoming medical procedures that I will need to afford, the costliest of which will most definitely be getting new teeth.

And I'm going to need this money soon because we need to start on these procedures so soon that they're basically already knocking on my door at this point.

Please help me to, somehow, get at least one of my many worries out of my mind. I will truly be grateful to you for as long as I live because, at this point, you're saving not just me, but also my family. I could never thank you enough.