Hello family and friends, My name is Santiago Falla and I'm raising funds for my fiancee Tatiana May. I am raisings funds in order to cover Tatiana's spine surgery after our motorcycle accident in Mexico.
It is only by God's grace that we get to tell the story. We were driving on a beautiful sunny day on a country road in the state of Michoacan, Mexico when a peasant woman lost control of two horses she was guiding through. One of the horses "freaked out" and ran right in front of us giving us no time to avoid him. We were going at about 80 KPH or 50MPH which is pretty much like hitting a wall. We both lost consciousness and unfortunately, Tatiana's seat being higher than mine propelled her a bit further causing a lot more physical damage. She broke her nose, her lungs got filled with blood, but the most critical part happened to her back. 3 of her vertebrates were completely pulverized and 9 were completely crushed.
Again, it is only by God's grace that she is able to walk after such a massive injury to her back. The doctor in Mexico told us that out of 100 people with this type of injury, 2 would get to walk.
We never ever take for granted this incredible miracle!
We spent about a month in Mexico and the doctors did an incredible job reconstructing Tatiana's back. They basically made her spine again with cement, nails and two sort of metal bridges that hold everything in place. The problem we are facing right now is that the material is coming off and causing a lot of pain as it rubs against her skin. We knew we had to remove the material roughly one year after the surgery but we are facing several challenges.
The first challenge that we are facing is that because the surgery was in Mexico and we are currently in Colombia, we need to find the exact tools needed to remove the nails that were put in Mexico. These medical materials are specific to hospitals and countries and so far we have not found the tools in Colombia. We have found them in Mexico but importing them and bringing them over is a very complicated, pricy and bureaucratic process.
The second and biggest challenge we are facing is that our Colombian medical insurance is refusing to cover anything associated with the surgery because they say it happened in Mexico and we were covered there under a different policy.
that is true, luckily we were traveling with travel insurance that did cover all of our medical expenses in Mexico (which were close to 80K dollars) but now refuses to cover anything passed the accident.
The spine specialist in Colombia told us that this is a very high-risk surgery due to the location of one of the nails. He said there is one nail that is very close to the spinal cord and needs to have a neurosurgeon in case there is damage to the spinal cord and a plastic surgeon that would reconstruct all of her muscles.
My friends, this has been an incredibly challenging and stressful time. We have debated for a long time whether or not to start this go fund me campaign but now have no choice but to put our pride to the side and humbly ask for your help. Any help would be greatly greatly appreciated.
We are planning on using this money to cover the legal costs for fighting for our right to be covered by the Colombian insurance, also to start the process of bringing all the tools needed for the surgery to take place in Colombia and lastly, for the obvious; to cover all of the medical expenses associated with this very complicated procedure and recovery.
I cannot thank you enough, thank you for keeping us in your thoughts and prayers, thank you for the massive help that we have already received outside of this campaign (you know who you are) and thank you for letting us feel that we are not alone in this difficult time! we love you very much!