Word: valdez
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...wasn't morning sickness that made Vanessa Valdez's first trimester of pregnancy so hard--it was homesickness. So when the check-cashing company she worked for in Tucson, Ariz., offered her a transfer to her hometown of Douglas, she jumped at the chance. Four months pregnant at the time, Valdez, 24, was delighted to come home to her boyfriend, her parents and the 2-year-old son she left in their care when her job took her out of town. But now, as she prepares to give birth to a baby girl, she is dealing with a major drawback...
...Valdez gave birth to her first child at Copper Queen Community Hospital in Bisbee, an old mining town just 26 miles northwest of Douglas. But when six family practitioners decided they couldn't afford the soaring malpractice premiums required for them to keep delivering babies, the hospital was forced to close its delivery room. Suddenly rural Cochise County, a 6,000-sq.-mi. expanse of mountains and desert along the Mexican border, had but one delivery room left for its 118,000 residents. It is in Sierra Vista, 50 miles northwest of Valdez's home. Which means that a week...
...rising malpractice-insurance costs force a growing number of physicians to change states, drop certain procedures and even quit medicine, many patients like Valdez are finding themselves abandoned. In Las Vegas, where a number of obstetricians have stopped accepting patients, forcing some women to drive to Utah for prenatal care, a pregnant radio host took to the airwaves and begged her listeners to help her find an obgyn. (Her unorthodox method worked.) In Pennsylvania, a particularly unlucky senior has lost his neurosurgeon and orthopedic surgeon to other states, and now his rheumatologist and urologist are threatening to move as well...
...Valdez doesn't have it quite so bad--but don't try to tell her that. While she is busy looking for a new doctor in Sierra Vista for the big day in August, she is still commuting two hours to keep appointments with her current doctor in Tucson. The road to Sierra Vista winds through mountains and creosote flats. "It's going to be summer now, and it's getting hotter here," she says. "I'm afraid of the car breaking down again"--as it did recently while Valdez was driving alone on her way home from Tucson...
...Having this program makes Mom feel better, knowing that my husband and I are getting paid something," says Prescilia Burt, 57, a retired public relations executive in Albuquerque who takes care of her legally blind mother Terezina Valdez, 83. Burt quickly adds that "no family member does this for the money; it just provides a little bit of cushion." Her husband David, 59, a retired management consultant, also helps. They bought Valdez a house next door to them, pay for all her living expenses and spend about 80 to 100 hours a week maintaining her house, managing her medications, cooking...