If Randy Blowers were alive he’d offer this advice about international travel: Take medical records; buy travel insurance and, if you have a serious medical condition, wear a medic alert bracelet.
Sadly, for his surviving sisters, Blowers did not take those precautions. Worse yet, the complications of finding and trying to help him were like a slow walk through hell.
Blowers, 58, a master mason, often took winter months off to explore places he’d not seen before, his older sister Judy Woodmansee says.
On Dec. 25, he flew from Seattle to Korea. His passport was stamped in Seoul and then in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. In mid-January he arrived in Vietnam’s capital, Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon).
When funds ran short, his routine was to call his younger sister, have $1,000 wired from savings and then call back immediately to confirm his money had arrived.
In February he called and she wired $1,000. He did not call back.
Several days went by.
Concerned, she called the American Embassy in Vietnam for help. A week later, the embassy called back. Blowers had been in a coma on life support in the city’s major hospital since Feb. 16.
Unable to get more information, the family sent $200 for a private doctor to examine Blowers. The embassy translated the report into English and e-mailed it to the family.
It said he was in a deep coma, on life support and there was no hope for recovery.
Then, Woodmansee says, a cousin called to say she had a friend in Vietnam on business who went to the hospital and saw a man identified as Blowers. He responded to the sound of her voice speaking English and opened his eyes. There was no sign of a tracheotomy or a stomach tube, she reported.
“We knew we had to go and see if there was a chance he was alive,” Woodmansee says.
While they waited for passports and visas, Woodmansee called a physician who’d served in Vietnam with Doctors Without Borders.
“He advised us to hire a translator and gave us a contact. He also said take lots of small bills in mint condition because they wouldn’t take used American currency.”
The sisters arrived April 22 in Ho Chi Minh City and checked into a large hotel that evening. The next morning, with an interpreter, they went to the hospital.
Before they could see Blowers, a physician took them aside to say his bill was more than 100 million Vietnamese dong (about $6,000, they learned later) and it had to be paid immediately.
The women insisted on seeing their brother first before anything else.
“The halls were jammed with sick and injured people lying on woven mats waiting to see doctors. Randy was in a large, crowded ward where patients were two to a bed or on the floor on mats Family members were feeding and caring for them.”
Their brother emaciated and struggling to breathe, had a stomach tube for nourishment and the scar from a tracheotomy. He was unresponsive.
Someone had been taking care of him, she said. After all those weeks in the bed with newspapers under him as pads, he had no bedsores, and his body was clean.
Tests showed, the doctor said, he’d suffered irreparable brain damage.
Distraught, they stayed with him for nearly an hour before hospital officials began demanding immediate payment or their passports. “You can’t leave without paying,” they were told repeatedly.
“We’re responsible adults, we knew we had to pay this bill, but we didn’t have that kind of money with us and we wanted some advice from the consulate about what to do,” Woodmansee said.
The administrator had called their hotel and had their passport numbers and departure itinerary. In order to leave the hospital, she was coerced into signing a note guaranteeing payment.
The next morning, after a lengthy wait to get in the American embassy, a member of the consulate staff, Martin Opus, came to their aid. “He told us to be very careful when and how we paid, because they probably would put him in a wheelchair and take him to the curb so we’d have to take him with us right then. If that happened, he told us to call him and he’d send help.”
Later they went to the hotel where Blowers had stayed, hoping to find out what had happened. A woman who said she’d befriended him had found him in his room, unconscious. When she could not wake him, she called an ambulance.
Although a diabetic kit was later found in his belongings, no one in the hotel nor his family in America knew that Blowers was a diabetic who took insulin shots daily. Doctors, trying to diagnose his condition, did not have that critical information.
Back at their hotel, the sisters, frightened and weary, cried until there were no tears left.
“I told Sherry if we had to, I’d take Randy back to the hotel and stay with him until he passed,” Woodmansee says, but admits the thought of staying on alone terrified her.
After consulting with the embassy, the women decided to pay the bill the following day and fly home immediately. “Martin Opus told us they’d take care of Randy’s remains and help us if the hospital tried to stop us from leaving the country.”
Although hospital officials insisted they come at 1:30 p.m. to pay the bill, a translator’s conflict put them there at noon.
The administrator’s secretary was furious because they were early. Finally, she took Woodmansee’s credit card for payment.
“We think now their plan was to put him in a wheelchair and put him outside while we were paying the bill, so we would have to take him with us. We just got there too soon.”
As it was, they had time to spend at his bedside saying a last good-bye. They left before the administrator returned from lunch.
Well before dawn the next morning, they slipped out of the hotel and took a taxi to the airport, two days before their scheduled departure. “We were terrified they’d try to stop us,” she recalls.
On May 10, word came from the embassy that Blowers had died. The hospital wanted $850 more for his care along with $2,500 to have his remains cremated and his ashes sent to the family.
The sisters paid the bill. They want their brother home, at last.
Linda Bryant Smith writes about life as a senior citizen and the issues that concern, annoy and often irritate the heck out of her now that she lives in a world where nothing is ever truly fixed but her income. You can e-mail her at ljbryantsmith@yahoo.com.
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