When Sheyla Lagunes started to throw up, her family assumed she was simply getting a bad cold.

“To be honest, we thought she was just getting the flu or something,” stepmother Carrie Pambrun said.

“Then she lost the vision in her right eye and we realized it was more serious.”

Lagunes had recently graduated from high school in Mexico and came to Abbotsford in August to visit her father Gerardo Lagunes. She planned to stay in Canada for a few months and was taking some English courses. The 18-year-old had no chronic health problems and had no travel insurance.

“We took her to the clinic and they said she had a hematoma behind her eye, probably because of all the vomiting. They suspected it was a migraine,” Pambrun said.

Lagunes was given an anti-nausea treatment and returned home.

Three days later, Pambrun’s mother discovered the young woman lying on their bathroom floor, still conscious but breathing heavily and vomiting blood.

Lagunes was rushed to hospital in Abbotsford, where emergency medics discovered she had alarmingly high blood pressure and fluid collecting in her lungs.

Lagunes’ kidneys had failed. She was intubated and sent on to Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminister. She was stabilized with an emergency dialysis treatment.

Doctors told Pambrun her stepdaughter had a severe kidney infection. Lagunes had been treated for a brief infection in Mexico more than three years ago, but had not seen any symptoms since.

“She was fine – perfectly normal,” said Pambrun. “We visited her several times over those years. No-one had any idea.”

But the infection had been silently damaging Lagunes’ kidneys, which finally gave out five weeks after her arrival in Canada.

“If this had happened in Mexico, she would have died,” said Pambrun.

“It’s just that simple.”

Lagunes will require three rounds of dialysis each week for the rest of her life, or until she receives a kidney transplant. These treatments, and the emergency care she has already received, have put a heavy burden on Pambrun and Lagunes’ family. They have already paid $13,000 on their credit card for their daughter’s two nights in intensive care. They owe a further $7,000 to Royal Columbian and are still waiting to hear the cost of the specialized kidney care. Dialysis alone costs $700 per treatment.

“What can you say? Obviously her life is worth more than any money,” said Pambrun, who has two other young children and works part time in a dental office.

“We live basically paycheque to paycheque. There are going to be some lean times.”

Gerardo Lagunes, who works for the Langley school district, has taken a three-month leave of absence to accompany his daughter back to Mexico, where she lives with her grandparents.

“She wants to get back into familiar surroundings,” Pambrun said.

“And we have found her a specialist in Merida, but that’s about 14 hours from where she lives. We’re going to try and change the kind of dialysis she gets so she can learn to do it herself, and in the long run we have to look for a transplant.”

Pambrun said her stepdaughter has responded well to the dialysis and is coming to terms with her long-term condition. In the meantime, Pambrun said she has learned two important lessons.

“Get insurance! That’s the big one. But also, I am so grateful to the doctors here and at Royal Columbian. They saved her life. People complain about our healthcare system but I am extremely happy with the care we got. They did everything they could.”