When a vibrant and excited Daniel Treacher left Nanaimo two months ago to winter in Thailand, his daughters never imagined they would next see him lying in a Thai hospital bed, unable to move or talk.
“I just want him to come home,” said Treacher’s daughter Cherrill Treacher.
“And I don’t want anyone else to have to deal with that,” she said.
“I’ve never felt so powerless, in my whole life,” said his other daughter Lisa Robson.
Their father has been laying in a Thai hospital for six weeks after undergoing brain surgery due to a serious fall, and now he has contracted pneumonia.
“And it just progressively got worse,” said Robson.
Worse yet, his Vancouver Island family has no way of getting him out of there due to a lack of medical insurance.
“He probably thinks I’m gonna die like this,” said Treacher.
“Because he probably is if we can’t get him home,” she said.
The 66-year-old Nanaimo man winters in the sunny Southeast Asian climate as a snowbird on a budget. He told his daughters he would put money in a Thai bank account for emergencies as opposed to medical travel insurance because of the cost.
Cherrill Treacher said if he’d known then where he’d be now, he certainly would have insured himself.
“If we can’t save him maybe we can save someone else,” said Treacher.
“People don’t realize the dangers you are putting yourself in,” she said.
Daniel Treacher’s daughters have now spent $15,000 dollars to pay the Thai hospital so far and he’s getting worse.
Despite appealing for the Canadian Embassy to help, Treacher’s daughters say little has happened.
“It has gone downhill fast,” said Treacher.
“At this point if we can’t raise enough money to get him a medivac back home then he is likely going to suffer for a long time and it won’t end well,” she said.
So a GoFundme campaign has been launched and a Beer and Burger event will be held at the Lantzville Pub on December 1st to fundraise to medivac this Nanaimo grandfather home.
The total they need to do that is an extraordinary $150,000, but the alternative is too painful to imagine.
Skye Ryan
