Help Lilly with Emergency Medical Needs in France!
Donation protected
Our dear friend Lilly (Falconer) needs help with huge, unexpected medical expenses after falling and dislocating and breaking her ankle in a triple-compound fracture while in the Bordeaux region of France. She is currently in France, recovering from emergency surgery on her ankle where she received ten screws and a metal plate, with three nights in the Langon hospital. It sounds like Lilly is in good spirits despite a LOT of pain and difficulty navigating this event in a foreign country and a foreign language. She has even joked that this accident has improved her French skills. Now she knows how to say "I'm in a lot of pain" in two different ways in French! All kidding aside, she needs our help.
Lilly's French vacation was also a work trip, since she was babysitting Ariella's daughter while she taught a workshop/women's retreat in St. Vivien de Monsigur, but the accident happened on the first night of the workshop, so many adjustments had to be made – all costing time and money that nobody could have planned for.
We are asking for donations to help pay for:
- The cost of the ambulance, surgery (at this point this is a BIG question mark – could be $2k, could be $50k!), hospital stay, medication (LOTS of pain meds!), transport from the hospital back to the workshop site, transport to the guesthouse in Bordeaux, and transport back to the airport. While French healthcare is MUCH more affordable than the US, Lilly is not a French citizen, and did not think to purchase extra medical coverage for this trip through her own insurance back home (pro-tip, don't skip this step!) so we won't know how much it will all cost until the bill is mailed to her back home.
- Her mom (Jody) to come to France last minute to care for her until she can fly home in a week or maybe longer.
- A place for them to stay in Bordeaux France while she recuperates until it's safe to fly home.
- Future medical expenses, recovery, and physical therapy, including in-home care if needed (6 weeks in a wheelchair plus a couple of months of physical therapy means lots of help needed cooking, cleaning, washing, etc.)
- The cost to change her flight home, and get Jody back home too. We are at the height of the tourist season, so economy flights are around $2000 if not more, and Lilly will need her leg elevated, so a business class ticket ($10k+) may be necessary, though we are looking into medical accommodations with the airline.
- Moving costs – on top of all this, Lilly was planning to move from her Mill Valley studio to a little one-bedroom in her hometown of Sonoma at the end of June. Now that she will be immobilized she needs to hire movers to pack and move all of her belongings. Her studio apartment is down a series of stairs, so she might not even be able to get there again!
This accident has been immensely challenging for Lilly – not just the pain of a complicated break, long ambulance ride, 8+ hours in the ER without meds, and surgery – but needing to ask for help. She likes to do things herself, take care of herself, and is genreally very independent. Lilly is a caretaker by nature, so having the tables turned, needing to rely on others for *everything* is VERY uncomfortable for her, which makes each donation (however big or small) that much more impactful.
If in the end more funds are raised than are needed, Lilly has said she would like to donate any surplus to LGBTQ+, immigrant, and reproductive rights protection efforts in the increasingly unsafe places in the united states, so either way, your contributions will go where they are needed!
**EDIT: if you cannot donate through GoFundMe or would rather use Venmo or PayPal, you can send money to Lilly directly on Venmo @lilly-falconer or PayPal [email redacted] **
Organizer and beneficiary
Lexi Daly
Organizer
Healdsburg, CA
Lilly Falconer
Beneficiary