My name is Luis Arenas and I am on here asking for help from my family, friends, loved ones, and anyone else who will find it in their heart to help with even just $5. My mother was in Mexico with my brother Victor, and planned to come back to Pasadena by the end of August. Unfortunately, she was diagnosed with COVID-19 this month as she was getting ready to travel back. She began spiraling down starting on August 12th. I arrived in Mexico to help my brother Victor take care of mom on August 16th. At this point, she was already requiring oxygen tanks to be able to maintain adequate oxygen levels to keep her organs from failing. With a lack of hospital space, we had to take care of mom 24/7 at her Mexico home, running to get ahold of oxygen tanks every 12 hours. Navigating Mexico with a medical emergency is a challenge in itself. We've had no sleep, our mental health has declined these last couple weeks, and it's been an unbearable pain witnessing our mother fight to stay alive, hearing her cries, and fight for her every last breath. We attempted to hire overnight nurses, as she progressively got worse and places began to run out of oxygen tanks. To witness your mother go through this is a type of pain that cannot even be explained. The lord answered our prayers and we found a hospital this morning on August 25th. Our mother is at stage 4 out of 5 on the COVID-19 scale, with stage 5 being the most grave and when patients require intubation.

Unfortunately her insurance does not cover emergency hospitalizations out of the country and we will need to pay out of pocket every single day she is in ICU. In US dollars, the admittance was $4,000 today (intake date), along with ambulance fees, and initial diagnostics. Daily rate will be around $3,000. This total doesn't include additional charges for medications, diagnostics, and further expenses if her condition worsens. We are estimating she will be in ICU for at least 3 weeks if she manages to pull through. I have also not listed the numerous oxygen tanks we purchased while we were trying to keep her alive at home, with each tank being over $600. Our family has been deeply affected by this devastating event, not only financially, but emotionally... as we cannot bear to think about possibly losing our mother to this COVID-19 enemy. We are asking for some assistance to ease the anguish of medical expenses. We have no idea how long this will go on for and what type of debt we are looking at in the weeks to come. If you cannot donate at this time, re-sharing this will help as well. Love you all, thank you so much for having us in your prayers each and every day that passes by.