I woke up that morning and I was a little bit more tired than usual, but that happens to everybody.
You get some days like that. And I had some pain in my legs and I had been to the gym, so I attributed it to that and I had to go upstairs to get something. And when I was walking up the steps, I fell and actually rolled back down the steps, looked around, didn't see anything, but I was able to get right back up again.
Got up, walked up the steps,and the initial kind of bewilderment wore off, got what I needed to get, went back downstairs, turned around to walk, and took there's one step down and fell again.
So of course Vic was, you know what just happened? And I said, yeah, that's kind of odd.
So the falls started to pick up in frequency. Vic at this point, of course, was becoming a little bit more frantic and saying, you know, “I think there's something wrong” because of my background.
I said to him, I think there's either two things. I think maybe there's possibly a tumor on the spine and it's, you know, got to a critical mass now, or it's affecting my ability to walk. Or I could potentially have Guillain-Barre and explained to him what that was, that it's kind of the body attacking itself.
You know, Vic was right away. “I think we need to, to go to the er.” The public hospitals, um, quite frankly, they're government run and you know, there, there are places that you usually want to avoid.
So there was, um, a hospital nearby that was private, and that's where I suggested that we go, just because I had known that it was not a public hospital.
Um, I think that's when some of the fears started to set in, because I realized the seriousness of the situation and some of the potential things that can happen with Guillain-Barre.
And then the realization that I'm far from home. Um, I don't really understand the medical system here. I don't understand the processes here.
So the next morning, which, you know, which was only a couple of hours later, by this time I went to him and, um, was asking him, what's going on? He said, “well, they're gonna do tests, they're gonna do MRIs.” That might've been when he said to me, I, I'm gonna die. He said, and I don't want to die in Mexico. I don't wanna die here.
The doctor at some point, um, was asking for payment. So I had to give them a credit card, and I had to, you know, sign papers and, and, you know, agree to a lot of things, which I would've agreed to anything at that point in time.
I knew that they were gonna ask for insurance. And so I called GeoBlue, more or less to tell them that Brian was sick. So they kind of took over and, and ran with it. They said, no, no, no, we got you. We'll open up a case. We'll arrange for a, a guarantee of payment so the doctor will be happy, you know, we'll, we will look into what we need to do to get him out of there.
And it was really like amazing how they got the guarantee of payment right away. We would've been probably mortgaging our house, or who knows, losing our house if we had to pay for this. ‘Cause it was significant.
After the case was created and after, um, the first communication with GeoBlue, they would call me, email me. So to have them there knowing that they're supporting me and answering, responding to me, following up, following through, making things happen. I mean, I don't even know there were, there were probably hundreds of things happening that I wasn't even aware of between the emails or between the phone calls.
I got the messages from Geo Blue saying, okay, “we're gonna evacuate him, we're gonna transport him out.”
A nurse slipped me a note that Vic had given her saying, “there'll be an air ambulance here to pick you up at such and such a time.”
Um, I felt a huge amount of relief. I, I can't tell you, I can't quantify the relief I felt upon the realization that they can get me out of here if, if that's what it comes to.
Um, I know that when I, when I got back home, I was, and I know this is going to sound very cliche, but it's true. I was really overwhelmed by a sense of gratitude. It shocked me. The, um, the ability to walk and how much we take for granted.
It's given me a true appreciation for what people go through for the potential fear that they're feeling for the bewilderment, for the sense of a loss of control, and how we as GeoBlue can alleviate that and can really give them peace of mind, which we, we might not be able to get in there and do the, you know, the actual hands-on care like the doctor's doing.
But I can't tell you, um, the, the rush of relief I felt when I knew that GeoBlue was there, you know, pulling the strings and we're going to get me out.
So using GeoBlue was just kind of natural because I, I felt comfortable. I've used them before and I would continue to use them and especially since the way they treated us, you know, they're certainly my, my preferred, uh, travel insurance carrier because they really, they really took care of us. They held our hand, they held my hand through every step of the way. And, um, you know, and, and kept us from financial ruin. 'Cause this certainly would've put us in a really bad place if we didn't have it. Needless to say, I'm, I'm most grateful that Brian came through the way that he did and that, um, he's a fighter and now he's back. And, and even better, I think.
