A Emergency Room Visit Last Year in the United States Cost Me $15,000. In Mexico Today, An ER Visit Cost Me $24. Here's What It Was Like.

While I offer all my news writing, investigative journalism and news analysis for free, I am paywalling my new “Diary in Exile” personal essays about fleeing the United States of America as a journalist under attack and forced to rebuild her life in middle age abroad. Boundaries. If these diary entries interest you, please consider an upgraded subscription!

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The old Sheriff Murphy house in Hillsboro, New Mexico, where I went to write a novel but ended up extremely sick instead

I’ll never forget that terrible night last summer. I was living in a haunted yellow adobe territorial style house in the tiny town of Hillsboro, New Mexico, at the edge of the Gila Wilderness, working on a book. Back when I thought I could still make a living writing novels. I’d thought it might be nice to get away, to have a little writing retreat. I’d also thought it might be a good idea to get that agua fresca, melon flavored, from the little green chile cheeseburger stand in Hatch, New Mexico, on my way back from a provisions run to Las Cruces. It wasn’t. It wasn’t a good idea. It was food poisoning in a cup. And I’d rarely felt worse. I drove myself through the darkest of nights, alone on the rolling hills, all the way to the nearest hospital — a crummy little outpost in the town of Truth or Consequences that would end up costing more than what I still owed on my Jeep.