Hi dears,

Some of you have been discussing possibilities of Norberto moving elsewhere, following his morning of very low morale. A few of us have been very busy chipping away at options. No one way seems easy. Practically, where we are at now is:

Germany and Mexico could well be viable options possibly within 2 weeks. However, the issue with these is safety to fly following the surgery. Mexico would be private, but costs apparently would not get so high. Germany would be covered with an insurance- either public or private, so costs would be reasonable. We are hoping for more professional advice from a doctor who can see his medical records and assess when he’d be safe to fly. The hospital are not giving the results easily so we continue to wait.

The other option is Sao Paolo - much easier to reach, but the hospital is private and bills can rack up fast. If there were any complications, costs could reach a million reias (around 215,000 euros) very quickly. Financially, he could lose everything. So we are wary of course to jump into this without a sponsor or sponsors that could guarantee a payment if it came to that.

We are discussing Sao Paulo as a short term option until he can make a long-haul flight. This is risky, as mentioned, so it would be great for us to get an idea of.. if he moved to the Sao Paulo hospital and some complication or treatment put the bill up way above what has already been raised.. is there anyone / do you know of anyone that would be able to commit to a significantly larger sum? It is not needed now, and hopefully it won’t be, but knowing if there are more funds available out there if needed will affect our decision whether to move him to Sao Paulo or not.

This is a big ask, and is more specifically in case people have plenty of funds available - please don’t jump in here and then risk being without in the case you need.

Would this short-term move be necessary? He goes through waves of being very demoralised, and saying that he’s crumbling and can’t last a month in this hospital. The lack of care, slow medical attention and, perhaps most importantly, the very limited visiting hours and hence in-person emotional support are getting to him in a big way. This is a critical time as the longer the kidneys aren’t functioning, the lower the chance of them regaining function. We don’t yet know if he would be getting significantly better medical treatment elsewhere, but it seems that not much is happening at this hospital.

So, we are still trying to find the way, and things keep changing. We’ll keep you posted as we can. Good news.. he was up and walking for the first time since surgery yesterday!

Lots of love,

Milli