The family of Juan José María González de Chaves Dreyer from Tenerife is sending out an SOS from Mexico. Hansi, as he is known, and his wife, Carolina Martínez, travelled to the Aztec country on March 14 to visit one of their daughters. A health setback turned that visit into a nightmare: he was admitted to a private hospital, and the bill for fifteen days of treatment skyrocketed to over 90,000 Euros. His relatives claim that the insurance they had taken out before the trip “does not want to cover” the expenses, forcing them to use their life savings and borrow money to pay off the debt. They had to move Juan José to the Metropolitan Hospital of Monterrey, a public facility. His wife details that he is currently in intensive care there, sedated, intubated, and on artificial respiration.
“We reside in La Orotava; I have always been a neighbour of Puerto de la Cruz and consider myself very much from El Puerto,” explains Carolina Martínez to this newspaper. Her husband is known in the Tourist City, among other reasons, for having been in charge of the Casino. Martínez claims to feel “neglected by Spanish institutions.” “Despite Spain’s reputation for solidarity with other countries, individuals born and working here, who faithfully pay taxes every year, do not receive the necessary support when needed,” she laments. “It’s as if we were in a prison without bars. I don’t see a way out anywhere,” she says, although she trusts that the support of their friends and contacts on the island can help them.
The details of what happened have been shared by their daughter residing in Mexico through a crowdfunding initiative on Gofundme to raise funds. It is entitled Help to Cover the Treatment and Medications for my Father. “I am their daughter Maria Victoria and currently reside in the city of Monterrey (Mexico), where, after a year of not seeing them, my parents decided to come and visit me with their trip planned from March 14 to April 25,” the young woman begins. “On March 31, already in Monterrey, my father began to feel unwell, very tired, coughing, and short of breath. Thinking it could be a flu or cold, we went to a medical appointment at a hospital and he was prescribed various medications,” she continues. “After several days, on April 10, my father worsened and went to another medical appointment, this time at an external clinic, where he lost all feeling in his right leg for several minutes,” she points out.
Continuing her account, they went to a private hospital, where several clots were detected “and it was determined that his lungs had collapsed.” One of the next steps was to perform a surgical thrombectomy on his leg to remove the clots. “My father will need a new operation on his leg called an angioplasty and stent placement, which is very costly and exceeds 15,000 Euros, but this is necessary to save his leg,” she maintains. However, his daughter emphasises that the most concerning issue is the lung condition.
“After 20 days in the private hospital, we had to pay a bill that exceeded 90,000 Euros (1,620,000 Mexican pesos), having to borrow money and go into debt due to the serious situation,” she explains about the financial aspect. “My parents had taken out travel insurance; however, the insurance does not want to cover the policy, alleging that my father’s illness was already present in Spain (no one goes on a trip while sick),” she asserts, before adding, “since we have no more financial resources, we had to transfer my father to a public hospital, where the care is not the same and everything is much slower.”
Their daughter admits that they never thought that what is happening in recent times could happen to them. “We ask for solidarity and empathy from others,” she continues, before asking for help to share what they are going through and to join their crowdfunding campaign. “Any donation, no matter how small, can help us so that my father can recover and return home,” she concludes.
