PHOENIX — Lindsay Bane never expected to be planning a cross-country move in the middle of a pandemic.
"I’m living with something that is jeopardizing my respiratory health," she says. "And my ability to breath."
She was first hospitalized back in October 2019 with a rare form of thoracic endometriosis that causes her lungs to collapse.
"It’s pretty scary," she says.
By January, she had a care team in place through Banner University Medical Center in Phoenix and has been dealing with the condition ever since. About two weeks ago, she had to go back to the ER for a collapsed lung.
"Honestly, you’re in the environment of COVID," she says. "And you’re waiting in the ER for hours to get a bed. You’re sharing a public bathroom in a place where there’s vulnerability and that’s very alarming."
What’s worse, she says, is that they found two holes in her right lung, but the specialty doctor she relied on since January wasn’t available to help.
"They said this would not be possible anytime soon. That my pulmonologist has been really preoccupied working in the hospital with COVID patients."
As of Tuesday, state data continues to trend up showing more than 1,200 positive or presumed positive patients visiting the ER as more than 2,000 COVID-19 patients remain in the care of hospitals across the state.
In a statement, Banner Health says they’re doing what’s called “load balancing," where they’re rehiring staff and even bringing workers in from out of state to help meet demands for care.
With a lot of attention focused on COVID-19, Lindsay feels the situation with her doctor is just another symptom of the virus.
"He’s in high demand," she says." He’s not really accessible. I don’t know when that appointment would ever happen."
Rather than waiting in limbo to keep monitoring her condition in Phoenix, she and her family are preparing to move across the country to Atlanta, one of the few places in the nation she says she can get surgery to remove the endometriosis.
"We have a lung attacking virus," she explains. "How could I live with a lung condition the way that I am?"
And she doesn't blame her team in the valley. Until now, she says she had great care, but the move to Atlanta was solidified in the wake of COVID-19. In Atlanta, she'll be able to get special surgery she says can't be done in Phoenix.
"I feel so bad for our medical community because they are so slammed right now," she explains. "It’s not that they haven’t done a great job."
Lindsay's community set up a GoFundMe to help on their journey. You can visit that site here.