Hospitalised British backpacker to fly home on Christmas Day
by Miranda Aldersley – Mail Online
The British backpacker who broke her neck jumping into a pool in Thailand is to fly home on Christmas Day after well-wishers raised £65,000 (2.678 million baht) towards her treatment and travel.
24 year old Sophie Wilson from Leicestershire, damaged two vertebrae diving into the shallow end of her hotel pool on December 1. Her accident prompting a worldwide fundraising effort to help pay her hospital bills and fly her home.
Read the original Thaiger report HERE.
She broke her neck in two places and is unable to use her legs after diving into a pool Shortly before midnight on December 25, Sophie will be boarded onto a plane on a stretcher with three Thai medics and her parents to make the 13-hour flight from Chiang Mai to Heathrow.
There, an ambulance will meet the plane on the tarmac and she will be taken to Queens Medical Centre in Nottingham where she will be assessed for further treatment.
Her mother Jane says: “We’re all looking forward to getting back now and settling down to some kind of normality. It won’t be normal life for a while and she won’t be going home straight away but we’ve got the flight arranged now, at least.”
Sophie has said the situation is heartbreaking and she had previously led a very active life style
The funds were raised on the family’s GoFundMe page, which will help cover the hospital costs, as well as the price of the flights for the family, and the three medical staff, who will have to be flown back to Thailand.
“The hospital is letting us leave without paying because we have to come home to get access to the money that’s been raised.
“It’s looking like the total cost will be about £91,000, including £37,500 on flights to come home and send the three medics back again.
“We’ve been waiting for the British Embassy to get us visas for the three medics to enter the UK, which seemed to take quite a while.
Sophie is still unable to walk and Jane said her daughter was ‘having ups and downs’ as she dealt with the impact of the injury on her life.
Sophie had been just one week into a six-month backpacking tour of Asia when she misjudged the depth of a swimming pool. She underwent 10 hours of surgery to try to correct the damage and in recent days has been undergoing physiotherapy to ensure she is fit enough to fly.
Sophie’s insurers, Insure and Go, would not cover the cost to fly her home with the medical care she needs.
SOURCE: The Mail Online
