KUSA — UPDATE Oct. 16 - A family friend posted on the GoFundMe page with news that Jason Oliver does not have an aneurysm and doctors have cleared him to fly home commercially. That means Oliver and his wife will not have to take a medical helicopter back to Colorado. Friends are working to get the couple back to Denver by Wednesday.
A Colorado firefighter is stuck in a Mexican hospital, but his friends and co-workers are working to raise money to bring him back home.
Lt. Jason Oliver works for the Lafayette Fire Department. Friends said he and his wife were celebrating their wedding anniversary in Cancun when he suddenly got sick.
“He and his wife left last Wednesday to celebrate their 16th wedding anniversary,” said friend Scott Stephenson. “On Friday, he started getting some neurological symptoms and ended up having to be transported to a local hospital there in Cancun.”
“It was initially evaluated as a spontaneous brain bleed,” Stephenson continued. “And in order for Jason to even get care, the hospital down in Cancun [demanded] payment up front, to get him into the ICU, get CT scans and stuff.”
Oliver’s wife has posted updates on her husband’s condition online after a friend started a GoFundMe page to help with medical costs. Family and friends are concerned, and increasingly frustrated, by the situation in Mexico.
Stephenson said doctors still don’t have a clear diagnosis for Oliver, yet continue to charge his family upfront for care and time spent in the ICU. Stephenson also said doctors have not been willing release him into better care or to come back to the U.S.
“It's terribly frustrating,” Stephenson said. “It's red tape that is holding us up. He is in a hospital doesn't have the capacity to provide the sort of care that he needs. At the same time. they're not willing to transport him to another hospital [where] we could get the care that he needs.”
“Without the right diagnosis, we don't know exactly what's going on they don't have the right facilities to do that, so we need to bring him home to do that,” said Lafayette Battalion Chief Mark Murray.
The GoFundMe account raised tens of thousands of dollars in just a few days for the Oliver family, and they are still collecting money now. Firefighters in Lafayette hope it will pay for medical transport to bring Oliver back to Colorado for treatment.
“Jason is a great dad. He’s a husband. He’s a veteran and a firefighter. We still do charity work together. And when he's not serving the community and his professional location he's doing and his off time,” Stephenson said. “He is a person who gives, and now it's our turn to give to Jason and his family.”
