Jaime Coutts, who was violently assaulted in Mexico while on vacation earlier this month, has returned to Vancouver.
The incident happened just over a week ago in Playa del Carmen. Coutts and a friend, Genevieve Thomas, were allegedly attacked by a Canadian boxer while out at a bar. He was arrested shortly after by Mexican police.
The brutal attack on Coutts meant she would need surgery, and quickly, as bones around her eye and nose were badly broken. It looked like she would need expensive surgery in Mexico before she could fly home she wrote on a GoFundMe page started to help her and Thomas recover from the attack. Just the scans to figure out what was wrong were expensive, and Coutts had traveled without travel insurance.
"Thank god I did the CT scan on my eye because we found out that my skull was broke very very badly below my eye and I would need immediate surgery. My eye was falling down into the crevice and with every movement of my eye the tendons holding it in were catching in the crevice of the break and ripping," she writes in the GoFundMe update.
With the surgery costs looking to exceed $50,000, Coutts was able to convince a doctor to sign off on her flying home.
"I’m terrified of losing my eye or the doctors not being able to fix it, or it being too late to fix properly as it’s now been almost 6 full days since the incident," she wrote in an update before her flight.
While the flight wasn't the smoothest journey, Coutts made it to Canada earlier this week and was able to stay with her mother. On Monday, Dec. 13 she was able to go for surgery at Vancouver General Hospital to begin repairs on the area around her eye. Multiple plates have been inserted and, while she's healing now, Coutts writes that a doctor told her she'll likely have to have cosmetic surgery in the future to fix her nose more.
"I am currently in a lot of pain but doing okay, lots of Tylenol, tramadol, ice packs, and water/Gatorade," she wrote, thanking friends, family and those who've helped her along the way.
This is the second time this year Coutts has been in the media. Earlier this year Vancouver Is Awesome and others reported on an incident where Coutts was followed by a man stalking her around downtown Vancouver until she was able to join a group of strangers.
