Life Center of Galax

Life Center of Galax was among the few Virginia facilities willing to treat patients using methadone or buprenorphine, making it a rare point of access for Tess Henry during pregnancy and after relapse. Its role in her story is defined both by the care it offered and by the wider obstacles surrounding treatment: substantial family expense, postpartum disruption, and limited options for continuing care without separation from her baby.

A rare treatment option

In June 2015, nearly seven months pregnant, Tess left jail and spent a month living with her mother while trying to make a relationship with the baby’s father work. The attempt proved disastrous. During her final month of pregnancy, her family found a private treatment center two hours away that would accept her; the book identifies it as Life Center of Galax, one of the few facilities in Virginia that accepted patients on medication-assisted treatment. Tess was taking Subutex, a buprenorphine formulation then recommended for some pregnant patients. Unlike Suboxone, it did not contain naloxone. At the time, Subutex was considered safer for the baby, though more liable to misuse by the mother. The facility’s willingness to accept a patient receiving this medication mattered because treatment access depended not only on finding an available bed, but also on finding a program whose rules matched her clinical circumstances.

Cost and pregnancy

The stay carried a reported bill of $20,000. Private insurance covered most of it, while Tess’s father paid the $6,500 deductible using the remainder of Tess’s college-savings fund. The arrangement secured care, but its financing depended on family resources that many patients could not draw upon. Tess had spent the first half of her pregnancy addicted to heroin and the second half taking Subutex. She was anxious that her baby might be born with neonatal abstinence syndrome, a withdrawal condition that can require a prolonged hospital stay. The risk was not eliminated by treatment: the account notes that about half of babies exposed to Subutex require neonatal intensive care and methadone treatment to help manage withdrawal.

Relapse and return

Tess relapsed not long after giving birth. Her mother, Patricia Mehrmann, suspected the relapse when a man appeared at the family mailbox claiming he owed Tess thirty dollars; Patricia correctly guessed that he was a drug dealer. Tess returned to Life Center of Galax for another month of treatment. During that time, the grandmothers cared for her baby, who was then around six weeks old. The return illustrates both the center’s continuing importance and the discontinuity in Tess’s care. Treatment could be resumed, but it required the baby to be cared for elsewhere. After Tess came home, she hoped to move to sober living or a halfway house; many such facilities did not permit medication-assisted treatment, and none of the available places would let her bring her child. She therefore returned to her mother’s home while continuing medication-assisted treatment.

A link in a fragile care system

Life Center of Galax appears in a larger account of how difficult it was to move from crisis into sustained treatment. Tess’s subsequent buprenorphine care involved a separate addiction doctor, cash-only visits, a $700 initial payment, and follow-up appointments costing $90 to $100 each, potentially four times a month. Insurance covered 80 percent of the medication, but not those appointment costs. Waiting lists further narrowed the available choices. By early 2017, Roanoke’s Hope Initiative was working from a five-page list of thirty-six rehabilitation and aftercare providers, matching patients to facilities according to their finances and the availability of beds. That effort underscores the distinction between finding a treatment center and building a reliable path through treatment, medication, housing, and family care. Life Center of Galax supplied a scarce residential option at two crucial moments for Tess, but her experience shows that a facility’s availability alone could not guarantee an affordable or continuous recovery path.