Four Months Since I Left Taiwan — Beyond Capacity

Four Months Since I Left Taiwan — Beyond Capacity

Today I woke up to the sound of the Taiwan 7-11 door chime in my head. That chime used to mean I could walk in, get what I needed, and keep going. I woke up with tears streaming down my face and soaking my eye mask.

It’s strange what your brain reaches for when everything feels unstable. People keep telling me to “just keep pushing.” I need to say this clearly: I have never stopped. Not once in a decade. No human can carry that load for so long without breaking.

I did it for years.

I haven’t stopped crying this week. One year ago on April 25, 2025, I received my Taiwan disability certificate.

Eight months later it was all gone. I will be addressing that situation soon.

Four months ago, I left Taiwan.

On December 3, I realized I had to go. By December 28, I was gone.

I didn’t spend months planning my departure. Nor did I get to say goodbye to anyone or do any last moments of life in Taiwan that meant something to me. In those weeks, I packed 23 years of life, organized international travel, managed my health, my medications, getting my cats to safety, and left my home — all at once.

I did it while sick and exhausted. Staying was no longer safe or sustainable. I didn’t just leave a place. Instead, I left my home, my routines and everything that was familiar to me; my job, my language, and a life I knew how to navigate.

I came back to Canada and have had to relearn everything as an adult.

There was also real harm leading up to that exit. I was living through pressure, instability, and a situation where I was managing my health and my life largely on my own when I shouldn’t have had to. Bad things happened to me these last five years and I am doing my best to process it.

Four Months Since I Left Taiwan — Beyond Capacity by Carrie Marshall

In my final weeks in Taiwan, I had three major hospital visits, including one that required disability transport.

My Taiwan social workers were involved almost daily. Just today I received another email from them checking in. They saw what was happening and they helped. They assessed me and secured 35 hours of in-home care. They owe nothing to me now and they are still checking in on me because they know what I was going through.

That is how sick I’ve been and how much the healthcare system was protecting me in Taiwan. It’s ironic that I hear more from my Taiwanese social workers than I have with my Canadian social workers.

Now I am back in Canada, and that level of support has completely disappeared. I’m dealing with a fragmented system.

No one is working together which requires me to tell my story over and over again.

I’m working with dozens of faceless voices.

There is no central coordinator. I’m being handed lists instead of support and I’m medically vulnerable.

Instead, I have people handing me websites and info to chase by phone. It takes days and weeks for replies.

In Taiwan, I navigated healthcare in a second language. I had monthly specialist care. I had continuity. I knew what would happen next. I completed complex disability paperwork in Chinese and had it processed in 25 days.

Here, AFTER filing ODSP paperwork at the end of March, I’m finally being asked if I “need help with the forms.”

I could write these damn forms in my sleep. I’ve even done them in a second language.

Meanwhile I have photos of my disability paperwork in Chinese and that feels surreal.

Today someone asked me why I haven’t started handling things in Taiwan.

I want to be clear that I have.

I’ve tracked down business records. I’ve corresponded with authorities and social workers. I’ve chased down health information.

So when people ask that, what I hear is this: they don’t understand that I am already doing this in two countries, across a 12-hour time difference, in two languages, while sick.

I’ve also asked friends for help. Friends in Taiwan (Jackie, Daniel, Tobie, and Jess) coordinated my power wheelchair leaving Taiwan in March. They packed it. Jess escorted it back to Canada. The battery did not come with it but I will have my chair on May 9. I ordered a new battery on April 27 – a $500 expenditure I was not expecting. But it means mobility and independence.

I wouldn’t be this overwhelmed if I wasn’t carrying all of this.

Four months into being back in Canada, I am still pushing every day.

Now it looks like this:

• calling offices and not getting through
• being referred in circles
• managing multiple appointments a week with no coordination
• rebuilding years of medical documentation from another country
• explaining my history over and over
• doing all of this in a full inflammatory flare

In the past week,

• I dealt with identity fraud and had my credit card cancelled
• The police and a crisis team were involved
• I continued trying to secure specialist care
• At Bijoux’s vet appointment, I broke down in the office and then again in the parking lot
• I have had horrible panic attacks every single day trying to keep my eyes on everything.
• My body is still in survival mode. I’m still living in hypervigilant mode.

I am in significant medical distress.

The one thing that would make me feel even a little safer right now is access to rheumatology care. I still don’t have that anchor. I’ve been accepted, but my appointment is months away.

I’m holding the line all by myself.

Meanwhile, I’m given more numbers to call, more programs to look into, more things to coordinate myself.

I can barely get through a day in this level of pain and exhaustion, and I am still expected to organize the entire system around me.

This is not about effort. This is about capacity and what happens when a system relies on people who are already unwell to hold everything together on their own.

And yes — right now, social media is one of the only places where I get immediate support. That shouldn’t be necessary. But it is real.

I’m not sharing this for sympathy. I’m sharing it because this is the reality I am living right now.

Four months later, the truth is this: I got out. The cost was real. And I am still here, but I am not okay.

And that needs to be understood.

I am a stranger in a strange land.

我身處陌生之地，是個陌生人。

I’m doing my best.

Chronically yours,

Carrie aka 微笑天使

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Author’s Note

This is part of an ongoing series called Truth Day, where I document what happened to me in Taiwan.

If this makes people uncomfortable, so be it. I will not be silent about what I lived through.

If you’d like to support me as I rebuild from the ground up, my GoFundMe is here:

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You Might Want To Read:

• TRUTH DAY: Words That Cut Like Knives
• Starting Over Isn’t Starting From Nothing April 8, 2026
• The Disability Gap To The Medical Access Gap – Rebuilding Seven Life Systems at Age 51 March 17, 2026
• The Disability Gap: When Is A Person Disabled Enough Part Two March 1, 2026
• 17 Years With AxSpA: Choosing A Different Kind of Love February 15, 2026
• 19 Years With My Several Worlds: The Next Chapter January 17, 2026