The Cuban Damilsy Medina Iznaga He suffers from chronic kidney disease and decided to leave his homeland to try to cure himself in the United States. He managed to get there and his quality of life improves.
Damilsy offered an interview to Cuban journalist Mario J. Pentón, where she narrated how she left the country accompanied by her husband, on a trip through Nicaragua.
The risk that she would die on that migratory route before reaching the United States was evident, but Damilsy still assumed it and went ahead with the project.
His surprise was not only to arrive, but to discover the opportunities that the American health system, known for being one of the most expensive in the world, had in store to help people in their delicate physical condition.
“I need a (kidney) transplant. My life depends on a machine to which I must be connected at least 10 hours a day. I left Havana on December 22, where I was undergoing peritonial dialysis, a treatment to which not everyone world has access. He achieved it with bribes,” he said.
The Cuban woman explains that her quality of life on the island was getting worse because supplies were scarce, she had to reuse the few she had and she simply couldn’t get others.
“I couldn’t take it anymore because things in Cuba were getting worse. I was taking risks in the hospitals because everything is reused and I caught bacteria and infections in those treatments. I want to continue living and that is why I undertook that journey that everyone advised me against,” he said.
Neither her family nor her doctors on the island recommended that this woman emigrate across borders to the United States, but her desire to be cured was so strong that she did not stop.
“At the border they were surprised when they saw her come to her with that,” said the husband and thanked a young woman in Mexico who helped her do the only dialysis she could along the way, in the city of Cancun.
“I left the border with I220A, but it doesn’t matter, I’m in the right country,” said this woman whose face exudes optimism and faith that her health will recover.
The couple acknowledged that the American health system is not all rosy, they know that there are extremely expensive treatments, but they have also seen first-hand how there are insurance policies designed for low-income people that guarantee a good, much better quality of life. than they had in Cuba.
“I went to the hospital urgently, when I didn’t even have insurance, and they treated me well. They gave me hemodialysis and gave me treatment,” he commented.
His testimony overturns decades of communist speeches in which the regime claimed that people without resources die in the United States without medical care.
The couple explained that at first they felt very afraid, because they came thinking that everything would be hostile, but then they discovered a human side in the Americans, supportive doctors, institutions with aid that provided them with the ways and resources to get ahead.
