Ready to kiss the ground

COEUR d’ALENE — When Vikki Moormann returns home tonight, she doesn’t plan to write a glowing report about how she spent her spring vacation.

Although Moormann, a retired Coeur d’Alene school teacher, did not cross an ocean when she went on vacation in Mexico last month, the void between there and home seemed greater than during her many previous travels across the pond.

“I’ll be so glad to get out of here,” Moormann, 70, said Thursday, during a phone interview from Mexico. “I’ve never wanted to leave somewhere more.”

Moormann and her sister-in-law, Patricia Rothmiller of Colfax, took a trip April 30 to Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico, to overcome the late winter doldrums. But a day later, Moormann, a diabetic, began throwing up. She was nauseous and her blood sugar shot up. Moormann said she sought medical help, believing her condition would be stabilized and after a brief stay she would be released from the hospital.

Instead, she was placed in an intensive care unit, Moormann said, charged more than $5,000 per day and was told she could not leave until her bill was paid in full.

After Moormann spent a few days in the San Javier Riviera Nayarit hospital, her son, Ryen Moormann, a cook at North Idaho College, was tasked with helping his mom pay a $17,000 hospital bill.

“She was better the fourth day,” Ryen said. A medical doctor cleared her to leave, but hospital personnel had a different idea.

When his mother, who sometimes needs a wheelchair, and his aunt, Pat, attempted to walk out the hospital’s front door, they were stopped by hospital security and told, no, no, no, Ryen said.

“The police got involved,” he said.

He called the consulate in Guadalajara, and the U.S. State Department in an effort to secure his mother’s release, but was told there was not much they would do, he said. He contacted the offices of Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo and Rep. Raul Labrador, he said, and they assured him his mom could come home.

But the hospital refused to budge.

In a phone call to San Javier Riviera Nayarit hospital, which Ryen Moormann recorded, a representative said his mother could not leave until the steadily-growing bill was paid. In full.

“I told them I was a cook and my mother is a retired school teacher,” he said. “We don’t have that kind of money.”

So, Vikki Moormann remained in the hospital for several more days and even though the doctors repeatedly told her she was fit to go, there was the matter of the bill, which had accumulated to close to $40,000 (the amount converted from pesos) while she waited.

Meanwhile, Ryen Moormann sent $5,000 toward the bill, to add to the $1,000 his mother paid, he said.

“We’re not trying to get out of paying it,” he said.

By Thursday evening, on the eve of her flight home, hospital personnel gave Vikki Moormann the green light. She was anxious. She had been in the hospital several days since her sister-in-law had to leave the country.

“I was devastated when she left,” Vikki Moormann said.

She spent the time watching “terrible, terrible TV,” she said, while waiting in the hospital located near the Hard Rock Hotel Vallarta and the Playa Royale Beach Club.

She ate hospital food.

And she made a plan to do something she has not done in all her years of traveling abroad.

“When I get home, I’m going to get down and kiss the ground,” Moormann said. “I’ve never felt a need to do that before.”

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The U.S. Department of State Bureau of Consular Affairs on its website, travel.state.gov, advises travelers to check their overseas medical coverage and find out if their coverage applies overseas and if it covers emergency medical expenses like medical evacuation. If it does not, travelers are encouraged to consider purchasing supplemental insurance.

On the agency’s page for travelers to Mexico, it states: “Mexican facilities often require payment ‘up front’ prior to performing a procedure. Hospitals in Mexico do not accept U.S. health insurance or Medicare/Medicaid.”