Kathy Goodpaster may be betting on miracles, but right now she’s praying that her social media fundraising campaign — via GoFundMe.com — will generate the $20,000 needed to transport her severely brain damaged nephew Christopher Hoctel back to Dayton, Ohio. Thus far, she’s raised $3,500, and her nephew only has a few months left before he has to vacate the subacute care unit at Goleta Valley Cottage Hospital.
The 32-year-old Hoctel has been a patient at Goleta Valley for the past six years, when a heart attack laid him low and cut off the oxygen his brain needed. Like the rest of the unit’s 25 long-term patients, Hoctel must find new digs before Cottage’s subacute facility is shut down for good in the next few weeks. Most of the patients — who need respirators and feeding tubes to stay alive — will be transported to Camarillo’s St. John’s Pleasant Valley Hospital. But some patients’ families — overwhelmed by the much longer drive required to St. John’s — have opted to bring their loved ones home. In Hoctel’s case, his aunt, his mother, and his grandmother are actively conspiring to get him back to Ohio, where the family originally comes from. Not only that, Goodpaster said, the Ohio State University hospital boasts some of the best brain trauma care in the country. “In Ohio, you can get sick or shop,” laughed Goodpaster.
The problem is getting there. The price tag to airlift a patient requiring Hoctel's level of intensive care from Santa Barbara to Ohio is $20,000. Insurance only covers the cost of relocating to nearby facilities not cross-country. Goodpaster was hoping Cottage might kick in a portion of the cost, but discussions with the unit social worker, she said, have not been fruitful.