Hospital bill has cancer victim stuck in Mexico

Shayna Lightfoot

Though the Jewel brings tourism dollars, occasionally Belizeans must take their paychecks across the border. The mother of a nineteen year old cancer patient is in need of assistance to bring her home from Merida. According to Era Lightfoot, her daughter Shayna, has made several trips to Merida for chemo-therapy since she was diagnosed about three months ago. But due to complications that arose during her last visit in June, Shayna needed emergency surgery and had to remain at the hospital. Since then, the medical bills have been mounting and up to today, Shayna is still at the hospital in Merida and her mother will not be allowed to bring her home until the bill is paid. The problem is that every day she stays there, the bill continues to grow. Era says, her employers have assisted, her coworkers have fundraised and she has even borrowed from the bank to cover the medical expenses since her daughter was diagnosed. But she has run out of money and is desperate to get Shayna out of the Merida hospital.

Era Lightfoot, Mother of Cancer Patient

“She has cancer and she went on June twenty-first to get her—we found out at the end of April that she had cancer and so ever since she’s been going there every other week or so for chemo-therapy and on June twenty-first, when she went there they had to keep her in. so they hospitalized her and she was in a coma for about twelve days, they had her in a coma—but the doctor put her in a coma. But she’s out and she’s doing much better and stuff like that and we had another relapse with—ih start to swell and had horrible pain and we do lotta ultrasounds, x-rays and dehn couldn’t find out what was wrong with her so they had to do an emergency surgery and they found out it was her appendix that burst. But she’s well and she’s getting a lot of care but we need her to come home. She needs to come home and it’s sending us crazy. We paid a lot of bills but it’s not enough because due to she was in intensive care and then the emergency surgery with the appendix, it’s hard and the bill is sky high and we need the Belizean public to come out and please if it’s even a dollar or anything, just to donate to us. They can drop it off at Mirab. My account number is 211-254-284 Atlantic Bank, my cell number is 636-1636. Just call me, call my work, anything I’m just asking if they can just please, please help us.”

Delahnie Bain

Era Lightfoot

“So basically, you can’t get her home until this bill is paid.”

Era Lightfoot

“Yes, she is in Clinica de Merida and they say the policy is that the bill has to be paid before she comes home. But she is in there and the bill keeps going up and up and up. So maybe I don’t know if the government, anybody can contact them and even let her come home; we noh mind go and pay—mek we sign something that we wah pay so much every week, every two weeks. I have no problem with that, just want her to come home.”

Lightfoot says that about five different doctors have tended to Shana and they each billed her separately. Those expenses added to the hospital’s bill tallies up to more than seven hundred thousand Mexican pesos, that’s over a hundred thousand Belize dollars still owed to the hospital in Merida.