Cut You Open

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• May 25, 2023

My good friend, Dani, is an inspiration for more ways than one. She’s a total badass. A justice warrior and captain. Cancer survivor. World traveler. Even though we actually grew up in the same town, we didn’t know each other growing up as she graduated high school before me. We met, originally, some years ago when one of my best friends had a bachelorette party at Cherry Grove. Dani and I have vastly different versions of that story when we met. She claims I was “a total asshole.” Not how I remember it. I remember me being extremely charming and hilarious. But then again, I was extremely wasted. Still, I must have been charming in some capacity since now Dani is one of my closest friends.

Anyway, Dani travels as much I wish I traveled. Like me, she despises the cold and yearns to escape to warm beaches. Most recently, she went to Jamaica with a friend of hers. A trip to a paradise turned nightmare.

Her and her friend went to Jamaica for eight days and seven nights. On their second to last day, she started experiencing a bad pain in her right side. Within a couple hours, her friend took her to the nurse in the hotel. They sent her to a hospital, which was a private hospital.

During the taxi ride, she started screaming in pain. Dani, I can attest to, has an extremely high tolerance for pain. So it must have been excruciating.  At the hospital, before anyone looked at her, she had to pay $3000. She obliged, figuring this is their policy. She paid an additional $1500 for a CAT scan.

When the doctor saw her with results, he said her appendix ruptured, and she only has a few hours before she goes septic. Her life was in danger. They asked if she wanted to go through with the surgery. She said she first wanted to call her parents. Of course when her folks heard the news they freaked out (I mean, they did have to watch her go through chemo, and now this, these poor people). They took to the internet and told her she had to go through with the surgery and couldn’t risk going septic.

Dani tells the people at the hospital she is going to go through with the surgery. They tell her she has to pay upfront. She asks how much it will cost. They tell her they will go check.

4 hours go by. Finally, an admin person comes back and on a hot pink post it, it says, “$26,000”.

Despite them saying it’s an emergency, they are taking their time. They took four hours to get a “quote” on the cost of surgery. Which was simply scribbled on a post it. The situation is starting to get suspicious. She doesn’t have a $26,000 on her credit limit. In figuring out how to pay $26,000 when out of the country, they suggest to have her parents send a pic of their credit card and license and a letter giving permission. Essentially, they’re telling her if she doesn’t get this money to them, they will let her die in the hospital (I know our health care system is fucked, but this really fucked. No hospital in America would do this). She asks to see the scans herself, in order to take a picture of them and send it to a doctor in the states to get another opinion. They refuse.

Dani doesn’t feel right about any this, and wants to go back to the states. They tell her she can’t leave the hospital. She will die. They tell her the airlines won’t let her board. They threaten to call the airports and not allow her to get on a plane because it’s “not safe.” They wouldn’t give her pain meds or antibiotics unless she was admitted which would be another $3500.

But keep in mind– Dani has been told she was going to die before with the cancer diagnosis which she beat. She is a survivor. This hospital picked the wrong chick to fuck with.

And this is starting to feel like extortion. Dani said that something about the doctors eyes being cold and black. She didn’t trust this man. Alarms were going off in her head. This situation felt wrong.

She looked into an emergency flight to be transported back home. $60,000 to go to NY. $18,000 to go to Miami. But at this point, her regular flight was the next day. So Dani and her friend just decided to stick with the JetBlue flight home. JetBlue told her in the event of an emergency— like if she actually started dying, they’d make an emergency landing.

She made it home on the regular flight without almost dying or having to force the plane into an emergency landing. Once home, she went to a hospital where she learned the problem was not her appendix. Her appendix wasn’t ruptured nor inflamed. It was an infection in her large intestine. A round of antibiotics would cure it. The appendix was never the problem.

I, personally, have had appendicitis. So I can vouch for the amount of pain it causes you. Also, it’s a super easy diagnosis when you look at the scan. The hospital in Jamaica did not make a mistake. They were running a scam.

Why were they going to cut her open? Just to take the appendix and charge her? How did she get the infection? Was it bad luck or dirty water? Or did the hotel poison her in cahoots with the hospital to take another organ? If they cut her open and didn’t treat the actual infection, could she have died?

These are questions we will never had answers to. It’s a troubling story that makes any traveler (or parent of a traveler) worry. Personally, I will never travel to Jamaica after hearing this. I mean, if anything happened to her down there, I’d have to go to Jamaica like Liam Neeson in “Taken” and seek revenge that probably wouldn’t end well for me either.

You should never be afraid to travel or leave the country. Some of the best experiences of my whole life have been traveling abroad. But choose wisely. And when you travel to places with corrupt governments, police forces and hospitals— it’s good to travel with savvy people with good instincts.

For the home country of one of the most revered chill and love promoting musicians, Bob Marley, this is a cautionary tale of lack of humanity. And while I don’t judge the citizens of Jamaica and know there are plenty of good people there, when your hospital tries to unjustifiably cut open someone I love and threaten their well being, for me, there will never be redemption.

There are plenty of beautiful islands in the Caribbean to visit and not worry about having organs harvested.

[Me and Dani on her boat, FireIsland]