The holidays in Thailand for Alexander García Galas, 36 years old, are dragging on like a nightmare. He arrived in the country for twelve days, but tomorrow it will be two months. He hired an organized and affordable trip, but now his family has to deal with hospital fees in Bangkok of 2,500 euros per night – surgeries aside – and not exactly in a suite.
La Vanguardia finds Álex in his uci box with a disoriented expression and a lost look. A painful image that, combined with the details of his ordeal, would be enough to put a country on its feet and accelerate its repatriation, at any price. However, his mother, Tere, can’t stand the stench. “No, no photos of the face. He saw himself in one and was very affected.”
Regarding the possible dispatch of an army plane from Spain, Tere knows “that they are studying it”, but assures that “there is nothing, nothing confirmed, if it were tomorrow (Friday), we would know, but no one has told us anything”.
Tere is accompanied by her young lady, Sayoa, Álex’s sister-in-law. His wife, Usoa Martínez, is in Sant Sebastià, looking after their two daughters, aged 5 and 8. On April 12, he boarded in Bangkok, towards Paris, a couple of hours before the scheduled flight of the air ambulance that was to transport Álex and for which the family had paid “221,000 euros “. When she landed in Paris, she learned that her husband never made it to board and that he had been returned, in a critical condition, to the hospital. The company, hired by another relative from Euskadi, refuses to reimburse the amount of the service not provided, according to the mother, because they say that they fulfilled their part.
The family has lost count of the expenses caused by the acute pancreatitis that attacked Álex when his trip to the north of Thailand – Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai – had barely begun and the passage to the Phuket Island. He had to be admitted directly to the prison in Chiang Mai. After a few weeks, the doctor advised her to be repatriated, and although she got a regular flight from Chiang Mai to Bangkok, the captain of the flight that was supposed to take her to Munich – Tere thinks she remembers that with Lufthansa – forced him off the plane because of his condition.
On the instructions of the same doctor and without any consultation, Álex was admitted to one of the two most expensive hospitals in Bangkok, where they range from Japanese executives to several Spanish ambassadors, all of them armored with insurance at all risk and in rooms very different from the box occupied by Álex. His insurance soon exceeded the coverage limit of 100,000 euros. “Since then, everything has come out of our pocket”, assures Tere.
Tere acknowledges that the online collection to help her son (crowdfunding) has already raised more than 100,000 euros, which will be used to pay medical bills. No way, he says, are they going to risk losing them again with a private air ambulance.
The García Galas family, from Basauri, appreciate the consular visit “three or four days ago”, which together with the television pressure would have set the wheel in motion to get Álex out of the hell where he is, at the limit of his resources , physical and material. “So far, no one else has approached us to ask anything. With the staff, we communicate with Google Translate”, explains Tere.
And Álex with us typing on his mobile phone, although sometimes he gets tired mid-sentence. He has blood clots, inflammation of the pancreas. It is very difficult for him, but mentally he is very strong”, says the mother herself, an example of surprising understanding. He wants, in any case, to get out of the way of some things he has seen in the media. “Álex didn’t have any discomfort before going on holiday and didn’t go to any doctor”, he explains.
The residents of the neighborhood of Basozelai, in Basauri, have been mobilized for days to help the family of Alexander García, reports El Correo. The group of residents already started collecting funds on April 17 through piggy banks placed in shops after learning of the situation of de Basauri, a resident of Sant Sebastià.
