Retiree hurt in Costa Rica flown home
Family ‘on edge’ in effort to arrange flight in time for bed at HHS
A Hamilton family was racing against the clock to get a seriously injured Dofasco retiree home after a bad fall in Costa Rica.
Hamilton Health Sciences had a bed open for 58-year-old David Ronald Thursday but his wife said it was only being held for him until 8 p.m.
“We’re a little on edge,” said Kristen Ronald from her husband’s bedside at CIMA Hospital in San Jose Thursday afternoon. “We just want to get home.”
Ronald says they were informed at 2 a.m. Thursday about the open bed at Hamilton General Hospital. Ever since, their insurance company was frantically arranging medical transport including a doctor and a nurse to travel with them. David and Kristen Ronald were in Costa Rica when he fell off a deck.
“They couldn’t start searching for a plane to get us home until they had a bed secured in Hamilton. There are so many things they have to co-ordinate.”
Hamilton Health Sciences said in a statement Thursday morning that it had “capacity at the HGH to receive a patient through international repatriation.”
It would not provide any more details due to patient confidentiality.
“I think the only reason it happened so quickly was because we got you guys involved,” said Ronald speaking about the media coverage of their situation.
She praised NDP leader and Hamilton Centre MPP Andrea Horwath for bringing attention to their plight. Her office said late Thursday the Ronalds were expected to land in Ontario at 10 p.m. and that she’d try to ensure the bed would still be available.
Minister of Health Dr. Eric Hoskins disputed the family’s claim in a statement Wednesday, saying intensive care unit beds were available in the Hamilton area around the time of the Feb. 15 fall that left the east Hamilton grandfather with a broken pelvis, back and arm. However, his office could not say exactly how many beds or on what days.
Hoskins suggested the insurer might be to blame. “We cannot verify whether the insurer contacted all hospitals in the region.”
But the family disagrees, saying the insurer has been “wonderful.”
“Our insurance company has been trying and trying,” Ronald said. “I’m really upset about the blame game. Really, that is how you are going to help us?”
The couple were on a two-week dream vacation visiting a friend’s house in Pavones, a remote village on the southern Pacific coast surrounded by rainforest, when Ronald’s husband accidentally fell nearly four metres from a second-floor deck.
Ronald and the friend lifted him onto a board and took him to the closest medical centre in the back of a pickup truck. He was flown to CIMA where he underwent two surgeries for his pelvis and arm.
The hope was that he would return home to Canada for a third surgery on his back. But the insurer could not find a bed in Ontario for him, his family said. Eventually, the back surgery was done successfully in Costa Rica
“He’s doing better than we expected,” Ronald said. “The hospital here has been fabulous. He’s one lucky guy.”