One of my worst days...
Alternate title: why MedEvac matters
We’d been enjoying a lovely few months on the beach in Costa Rica. Two young kids in tow, but that didn’t slow us down. We’d been enjoying the beaches, hiking to waterfalls, and exploring the countryside — from Nuevo Arenal to La Fortuna to Monteverde.
But we wanted something a bit more upscale for a weekend, a fancy “staycation” so to speak.
So we booked an Airbnb at a resort about half an hour away. Beachfront, luxurious, laid back.
As the weekend rolled in, we packed a couple backpacks and hopped in the car for the short drive. We checked into the apartment using a code from the host on Airbnb, immediately got our stuff organized, and then started putting swimsuits on the kids.
It was time for the beach, as sunset was but a few hours away.
Disaster strikes…
Once the offspring were beach ready, we brought the double-stroller out of the Airbnb. We had to lift it up a few stairs. Then my girl began putting one of the kids in the stroller.
I thought she had our other daughter as well.
So I begin finding the code on the Airbnb app to lock the door and once I have it, I immediately shut the door and lock it.
Then I hear it…
A deafening scream from a child. It sounds like my child.
The scream startles me. I turn around to see my 18-month old with her thumb caught in the door.
She’s jerking around, screaming bloody murder in pain.
I try to calm her down and open the door, but as I try to control her, the thumb completely rips from the door. Blood starts shooting everywhere.
My daughter looks down at her thumb and starts panicking, panting as she’s breathing, in between screams of pain. Tears flowing down her face.
I’m in shock.
But there’s no time for delay. I take my shirt off and instantly cover her thumb, put pressure on it — as I pick her up.
My girl is behind me with our other daughter now — equally terrified and in shock. I’m trying to tell her to put pressure on around my daughter’s arm so she doesn’t lose anymore blood, but it’s not translating.
What the fuck do we do here?! I’m lost, we just got to this Airbnb.
We start sprinting towards the front of the resort. I’m screaming for help in Spanish and English.
My daughter is losing a lot of blood.
We find a security guard who instantly calls a medic on-staff in the resort. They show up within 2-minutes and instantly begin checking her out. Super fast response time. Gracias a dios!
The medics open the wound to see it. People start to get lightheaded, my girl grabs my arm to not fall over. There’s blood going everywhere.
You can see the bone in her thumb.
She needs to get to the hospital and quick. Luckily, the resort has a car for this with a police light on top.
My girl takes our hurt daughter and goes in that car, directly to the hospital, about 30 minutes away. I get our car from the resort with our other daughter and put the pedal to the metal to catch up.
I didn’t know this at the time, but my daughter kept passing out from blood loss on the way to the hospital. My girl kept having to wake her up by singing nursery rhymes and asking her if she wanted ice cream.
My girl told me this a few days later, more on that below.
Rural hospitals in Costa Rica…
I finally get to the hospital.
“Hospital” might be a bit generous, there’s like two rooms and some equipment. It’s a small spot.
I see my daughter is already there, she looks ok, they’re cleaning her thumb in the emergency room. The bleeding has almost stopped, but she’s missing a big chunk of her thumb — like 25% of her thumb is gone. We can still see the bone.
I rush over to hug her, just happy that she’s breathing fine and not in panic.
The doctors begin filling me in. The rural hospital doesn’t have what she needs. Not even close. We have to get her to San Jose, the capital, tonight. She needs an emergency reconstructive surgery ASAP.
I immediately ask, “Ok, do I drive? How quick do we need to get her there?”
The doctors look at me, “NOOO! She needs to have medical support with her until she gets into surgery, you need to do a MedEvac. Do you have insurance?”
I did.
So I begin fumbling through my phone, hands still shaking from adrenaline and shock. I find my insurance, call them up, it includes MedEvac coverage.
I start speaking with the front desk at the rural hospital, trying to figure out how to get the MedEvac team here ASAP.
They take my insurance and begin processing the claim with my provider, but the front desk attendant leans over, “This is going to take 3-4 hours to get pre-approval. Or you can pay upfront via this link and the MedEvac team will be here in 30 minutes.”
Me: “How much is it?!”
$10,000 USD upfront.
Me: “Give me the link and call the MedEvac team to come ASAP”
$10,000 bucks is a good chunk of change, but there was no way I was waiting 3-4 hours with my daughter in dire need of medical care immediately.
I put it on the credit card and begged the front desk attendant to get the MedEvac team here as fast as she could. She immediately called them and we were told it’ll take 30-minutes for them to arrive.
MedEvac is a MUST…
The 30-minute wait felt like an eternity, but finally the MedEvac team arrives.
They start explaining what needs to happen…
It’s too dark now, so a helicopter is not an option. We have to drive to the Liberia International Airport and take a plane to San Jose, Costa Rica.
We all pile into the ambulance, my daughter gets hooked up to all the machines. She’s stable now, not losing more blood, not panicking. Gracias a Dios!
We speed off into the night, darting through one-lane roads.
This may have been the only calming part of the whole ordeal. The MedEvac team was incredible. They were caring for my daughter, keeping her calm, laughing with her, and explaining the whole situation to her mother and me in a soothing manner.
We get to the airport within an hour and there’s no brakes. The ambulance speeds onto the runway, directly next to the plane. It’s already open and ready, waiting for us to take off with the quickness.
We load my daughter onto the plane and hop in. We’re off the ground in less than 5-minutes. Unsurprisingly, MedEvac flights take priority over everything else at the airport.
The flight is smooth.
The medics are comforting and my daughter is about as calm as she could be in this situation. She’s got a huge bandage on her thumb and hand, which she keeps trying to take off because she’s two years old and doesn’t know any better.
We get to San Jose, the capital, and there’s another ambulance and team of medics waiting for us as we land.
We hop into this ambulance and speed off to the hospital. There’s a reconstructive surgeon waiting for us as we arrive.
Horrific memories…
We arrive at the new hospital.
The surgeon is there. He starts explaining what needs to happen next. He needs to see the wound, then we have to get her on an IV.
The nurses start attending to my daughter as I hold her. They begin taking her bandage off and my daughter starts to panic. I have to hold her down as she screams while they take the bandage off.
It’s not easy, but they finally get off the bandage and she somewhat calms down.
The surgeon takes a look.
The thumb was missing a huge chunk of skin, but there’s no damage to the bone or ligaments.
My daughter would need two reconstructive surgeries over the course of a week.
The first one would be at 6:00AM this morning, as that was the earliest the anesthesiologist could make it. It was around 3:00AM currently.
The surgeon and nurses leave us alone, as we move to a separate room in the hospital. My one daughter can’t stop sniffling from all the crying and pain. We do our best to calm her. Our other daughter is one-year-old, hasn’t slept all night, and is crying.
I find a hotel nearby and book it for 10-days.
Then the nurses come back. They give me a look of concern and basically say, “This is going to suck.”
What was going to suck?
I’d have to hold my daughter completely still, while they jab a needle into her arm for the IV. Finding a child’s veins is apparently tough. This was going to be painful for her.
I hold her tight, so she cannot move at all. The nurses take her arm, working to find a vein, and attempt to jab the needle in.
My daughter screams bloody murder. Blood-curdling screaming. I can still remember it to this day.
It took all the strength in my body to try and hold her still. She was doing everything in her power to escape, while screaming and crying as loud as she could.
The nurses looked at me after the first attempt, “We missed the vein. We’re going to have to do it again.”
I yelled at them in an aggressive manner, “NO! You are not. Go find someone else that can do it properly.”
They look shocked. Confused as to why I’m pissed.
But finally, they go and find the head of staff, who says she can do it properly in one try. Ok, do it.
I hold my daughter down again. She already knows what’s about to happen again. She’s screaming again. Crying. Panicking.
I’m at my breaking point, but I know my daughter needs me to stay upbeat, positive. So I hide the emotion. I hold her down tight. I talk to her softly.
This nurse gets the IV in perfectly this time around.
I put on a smile for my daughter. Talk to her softly, try to make her laugh. After calming down, she falls asleep for a few hours.
But I can’t relax.
I keep replaying holding my daughter down twice as she screams bloody murder, desperately trying to escape from my arms, doing anything she can to avoid the pain.
The look on her face — pure fear, pain, and confusion. Unable to understand why Daddy, one of the only people in the world she can trust, is holding her down and not allowing her to escape the pain.
Just a horrific memory I will never, ever be able to forget.
Time for surgery…
A few hours pass, as my daughters get some sleep in our hospital room.
I’d been researching what happens when a young child has to go under via anesthesia. There’s some risk involved. It’s stressing me out. Oh, and we’re in Costa Rica, a developing country, in a hospital I’d never been to or heard of before.
The surgeon comes back at 6:00AM sharp.
Only one parent can go with a child into the operating room. My girl goes with our daughter, while I stay with our younger one in the lobby.
At this point, I’m tweaking. The adrenaline is still kicking, but my energy is low. I’m holding my younger daughter as she sleeps, while praying that the surgery goes well and checking my phone damn near every minute for an update from my girl.
About two-hours later, I get a message that everything went well and she is awake again. Gracias a dios!
I take a deep, deep sigh of relief — and thank the Lord.
My daughter comes out of surgery and she’s in better spirits. Her thumb has a huge bandage on it.
But the first surgery was a success.
She has another one in six days, but for now, it’s time to rest. The doctor says to do nothing with the bandage until the next surgery. Don’t let it get wet and don’t take it off.
We go to the hotel.
Everyone passes out the minute we get to the room. We sleep all day and night, only waking up to order some food — and then passing out again.
The following afternoon, there’s finally a calm moment.
My daughters are napping. My girl and I have our first moments to talk about what had just happened and decompress.
I hadn’t broken down at this point.
My daughters had been crying throughout the whole ordeal. My girl broke down in tears multiple times from the stress.
Somehow I had managed to stay strong during our crisis.
Then as we’re talking, my girl goes:
“Yes, she kept passing out from the blood loss on our drive to the hospital. I had to sing to her and tell her we’d get ice cream to keep her awake. It happened 3-4 times.”
My jaw dropped.
When I realized she could have died from the blood loss, I couldn’t contain the emotions any longer.
I just looked at my girl and grabbed a room key.
I had no response. I had to go. I was going to break down. I could feel the tears starting to build. I needed to be alone.
I went to the public bathroom in the lobby of the hotel. I locked the stall. I cried like a baby for 10-15 minutes. All the emotions from the past 48-hours came out here.
In that moment, I was a grown ass man who had to cry and let that shit out. So I did. In private.
My kids didn’t see it. My girl didn’t see it.
I’m not ashamed of it. In that moment, it had to happen. I needed it.
Gracias a Dios…
To make a long story slightly shorter:
The surgeon did a fantastic job. The Costa Rican hospital in San Jose was fantastic.
My daughter’s thumb is fine these days. She has a couple scars, it looks slightly different, but there’s no permanent damage.
She’s a healthy, happy kid — with two fully functional thumbs.
The whole ordeal felt like we danced around disaster and barely made it out alive. Literally and figuratively.
And to this day…
When I look back on this situation, I find myself thanking the Lord that nothing worse happened to my first-born child during this disaster. That she’s still here with me today. That I get to see her grow up.
Gracias a Dios!
Disaster strikes…
Once the offspring were beach ready, we brought the double-stroller out of the Airbnb. We had to lift it up a few stairs. Then my girl began putting one of the kids in the stroller.
I thought she had our other daughter as well.
So I begin finding the code on the Airbnb app to lock the door and once I have it, I immediately shut the door and lock it.
Then I hear it…
A deafening scream from a child. It sounds like my child.
The scream startles me. I turn around to see my 18-month old with her thumb caught in the door.
She’s jerking around, screaming bloody murder in pain.
I try to calm her down and open the door, but as I try to control her, the thumb completely rips from the door. Blood starts shooting everywhere.
My daughter looks down at her thumb and starts panicking, panting as she’s breathing, in between screams of pain. Tears flowing down her face.
I’m in shock.
But there’s no time for delay. I take my shirt off and instantly cover her thumb, put pressure on it — as I pick her up.
My girl is behind me with our other daughter now — equally terrified and in shock. I’m trying to tell her to put pressure on around my daughter’s arm so she doesn’t lose anymore blood, but it’s not translating.
What the fuck do we do here?! I’m lost, we just got to this Airbnb.
We start sprinting towards the front of the resort. I’m screaming for help in Spanish and English.
My daughter is losing a lot of blood.
We find a security guard who instantly calls a medic on-staff in the resort. They show up within 2-minutes and instantly begin checking her out. Super fast response time. Gracias a dios!
The medics open the wound to see it. People start to get lightheaded, my girl grabs my arm to not fall over. There’s blood going everywhere.
You can see the bone in her thumb.
She needs to get to the hospital and quick. Luckily, the resort has a car for this with a police light on top.
My girl takes our hurt daughter and goes in that car, directly to the hospital, about 30 minutes away. I get our car from the resort with our other daughter and put the pedal to the metal to catch up.
I didn’t know this at the time, but my daughter kept passing out from blood loss on the way to the hospital. My girl kept having to wake her up by singing nursery rhymes and asking her if she wanted ice cream.
My girl told me this a few days later, more on that below.
Rural hospitals in Costa Rica…
I finally get to the hospital.
“Hospital” might be a bit generous, there’s like two rooms and some equipment. It’s a small spot.
I see my daughter is already there, she looks ok, they’re cleaning her thumb in the emergency room. The bleeding has almost stopped, but she’s missing a big chunk of her thumb — like 25% of her thumb is gone. We can still see the bone.
I rush over to hug her, just happy that she’s breathing fine and not in panic.
The doctors begin filling me in. The rural hospital doesn’t have what she needs. Not even close. We have to get her to San Jose, the capital, tonight. She needs an emergency reconstructive surgery ASAP.
I immediately ask, “Ok, do I drive? How quick do we need to get her there?”
The doctors look at me, “NOOO! She needs to have medical support with her until she gets into surgery, you need to do a MedEvac. Do you have insurance?”
I did.
So I begin fumbling through my phone, hands still shaking from adrenaline and shock. I find my insurance, call them up, it includes MedEvac coverage.
I start speaking with the front desk at the rural hospital, trying to figure out how to get the MedEvac team here ASAP.
They take my insurance and begin processing the claim with my provider, but the front desk attendant leans over, “This is going to take 3-4 hours to get pre-approval. Or you can pay upfront via this link and the MedEvac team will be here in 30 minutes.”
Me: “How much is it?!”
$10,000 USD upfront.
Me: “Give me the link and call the MedEvac team to come ASAP”
$10,000 bucks is a good chunk of change, but there was no way I was waiting 3-4 hours with my daughter in dire need of medical care immediately.
I put it on the credit card and begged the front desk attendant to get the MedEvac team here as fast as she could. She immediately called them and we were told it’ll take 30-minutes for them to arrive.
MedEvac is a MUST…
The 30-minute wait felt like an eternity, but finally the MedEvac team arrives.
They start explaining what needs to happen…
It’s too dark now, so a helicopter is not an option. We have to drive to the Liberia International Airport and take a plane to San Jose, Costa Rica.
We all pile into the ambulance, my daughter gets hooked up to all the machines. She’s stable now, not losing more blood, not panicking. Gracias a Dios!
We speed off into the night, darting through one-lane roads.
This may have been the only calming part of the whole ordeal. The MedEvac team was incredible. They were caring for my daughter, keeping her calm, laughing with her, and explaining the whole situation to her mother and me in a soothing manner.
We get to the airport within an hour and there’s no brakes. The ambulance speeds onto the runway, directly next to the plane. It’s already open and ready, waiting for us to take off with the quickness.
We load my daughter onto the plane and hop in. We’re off the ground in less than 5-minutes. Unsurprisingly, MedEvac flights take priority over everything else at the airport.
The flight is smooth.
The medics are comforting and my daughter is about as calm as she could be in this situation. She’s got a huge bandage on her thumb and hand, which she keeps trying to take off because she’s two years old and doesn’t know any better.
We get to San Jose, the capital, and there’s another ambulance and team of medics waiting for us as we land.
We hop into this ambulance and speed off to the hospital. There’s a reconstructive surgeon waiting for us as we arrive.
Horrific memories…
We arrive at the new hospital.
The surgeon is there. He starts explaining what needs to happen next. He needs to see the wound, then we have to get her on an IV.
The nurses start attending to my daughter as I hold her. They begin taking her bandage off and my daughter starts to panic. I have to hold her down as she screams while they take the bandage off.
It’s not easy, but they finally get off the bandage and she somewhat calms down.
The surgeon takes a look.
The thumb was missing a huge chunk of skin, but there’s no damage to the bone or ligaments.
My daughter would need two reconstructive surgeries over the course of a week.
The first one would be at 6:00AM this morning, as that was the earliest the anesthesiologist could make it. It was around 3:00AM currently.
The surgeon and nurses leave us alone, as we move to a separate room in the hospital. My one daughter can’t stop sniffling from all the crying and pain. We do our best to calm her. Our other daughter is one-year-old, hasn’t slept all night, and is crying.
I find a hotel nearby and book it for 10-days.
Then the nurses come back. They give me a look of concern and basically say, “This is going to suck.”
What was going to suck?
I’d have to hold my daughter completely still, while they jab a needle into her arm for the IV. Finding a child’s veins is apparently tough. This was going to be painful for her.
I hold her tight, so she cannot move at all. The nurses take her arm, working to find a vein, and attempt to jab the needle in.
My daughter screams bloody murder. Blood-curdling screaming. I can still remember it to this day.
It took all the strength in my body to try and hold her still. She was doing everything in her power to escape, while screaming and crying as loud as she could.
The nurses looked at me after the first attempt, “We missed the vein. We’re going to have to do it again.”
I yelled at them in an aggressive manner, “NO! You are not. Go find someone else that can do it properly.”
They look shocked. Confused as to why I’m pissed.
But finally, they go and find the head of staff, who says she can do it properly in one try. Ok, do it.
I hold my daughter down again. She already knows what’s about to happen again. She’s screaming again. Crying. Panicking.
I’m at my breaking point, but I know my daughter needs me to stay upbeat, positive. So I hide the emotion. I hold her down tight. I talk to her softly.
This nurse gets the IV in perfectly this time around.
I put on a smile for my daughter. Talk to her softly, try to make her laugh. After calming down, she falls asleep for a few hours.
But I can’t relax.
I keep replaying holding my daughter down twice as she screams bloody murder, desperately trying to escape from my arms, doing anything she can to avoid the pain.
The look on her face — pure fear, pain, and confusion. Unable to understand why Daddy, one of the only people in the world she can trust, is holding her down and not allowing her to escape the pain.
Just a horrific memory I will never, ever be able to forget.
Time for surgery…
A few hours pass, as my daughters get some sleep in our hospital room.
I’d been researching what happens when a young child has to go under via anesthesia. There’s some risk involved. It’s stressing me out. Oh, and we’re in Costa Rica, a developing country, in a hospital I’d never been to or heard of before.
The surgeon comes back at 6:00AM sharp.
Only one parent can go with a child into the operating room. My girl goes with our daughter, while I stay with our younger one in the lobby.
At this point, I’m tweaking. The adrenaline is still kicking, but my energy is low. I’m holding my younger daughter as she sleeps, while praying that the surgery goes well and checking my phone damn near every minute for an update from my girl.
About two-hours later, I get a message that everything went well and she is awake again. Gracias a dios!
I take a deep, deep sigh of relief — and thank the Lord.
My daughter comes out of surgery and she’s in better spirits. Her thumb has a huge bandage on it.
But the first surgery was a success.
She has another one in six days, but for now, it’s time to rest. The doctor says to do nothing with the bandage until the next surgery. Don’t let it get wet and don’t take it off.
We go to the hotel.
Everyone passes out the minute we get to the room. We sleep all day and night, only waking up to order some food — and then passing out again.
The following afternoon, there’s finally a calm moment.
My daughters are napping. My girl and I have our first moments to talk about what had just happened and decompress.
I hadn’t broken down at this point.
My daughters had been crying throughout the whole ordeal. My girl broke down in tears multiple times from the stress.
Somehow I had managed to stay strong during our crisis.
Then as we’re talking, my girl goes:
“Yes, she kept passing out from the blood loss on our drive to the hospital. I had to sing to her and tell her we’d get ice cream to keep her awake. It happened 3-4 times.”
My jaw dropped.
When I realized she could have died from the blood loss, I couldn’t contain the emotions any longer.
I just looked at my girl and grabbed a room key.
I had no response. I had to go. I was going to break down. I could feel the tears starting to build. I needed to be alone.
I went to the public bathroom in the lobby of the hotel. I locked the stall. I cried like a baby for 10-15 minutes. All the emotions from the past 48-hours came out here.
In that moment, I was a grown ass man who had to cry and let that shit out. So I did. In private.
My kids didn’t see it. My girl didn’t see it.
I’m not ashamed of it. In that moment, it had to happen. I needed it.
Gracias a Dios…
To make a long story slightly shorter:
The surgeon did a fantastic job. The Costa Rican hospital in San Jose was fantastic.
My daughter’s thumb is fine these days. She has a couple scars, it looks slightly different, but there’s no permanent damage.
She’s a healthy, happy kid — with two fully functional thumbs.
The whole ordeal felt like we danced around disaster and barely made it out alive. Literally and figuratively.
And to this day…
When I look back on this situation, I find myself thanking the Lord that nothing worse happened to my first-born child during this disaster. That she’s still here with me today. That I get to see her grow up.
This explains what I saw as a strange obsession with healthcare in your location evaluations. I had been through the healthcare systems, but nothing life-threatening.