Abigail Arellano keeps her son Samuel’s medical bills in a blue folder in a cabinet above the microwave. Even now, four months after the 11-year-old was shot at the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl parade, the bills keep coming. This story also ran on .
It can be . In the first of our series “The Injured,” a Kansas family remembers Valentine’s Day as the beginning of panic attacks, life-altering trauma, and waking to nightmares of gunfire. Thrown into the spotlight by the shootings, they wonder how they will recover.
There’s one for $1,040 for the ambulance ride to the hospital that February afternoon. Another for $2,841.17 from an emergency room visit they made three days after the shooting because his bullet wound looked infected.
More follow-ups and counseling in March added another $1,500. “I think I’m missing some,” Arellano said as she leafed through the pages. The Arellanos are uninsured and counting on assistance from the fund that raised nearly $2 million in the aftermath of the shooting that left one dead and at least 24 other people with bullet wounds.
She keeps that application in the blue folder as well. The medical costs incurred by the survivors of the shooting are hitting hard, and they won’t end soon. The average medical spending for someone who is shot in the first year, according to a Harvard Medical School study.
Another study found that number for children. Ten kids were shot at the parade. Then there are life’s ordinary bills — rent, u.