British tourist facing £60,000 medical bill after one insurance mistake had her stranded in Thailand
On 8 March, Joanna Ingram was enjoying the final days of her two-week Thailand holiday when she ended up suffering devastating spinal injuries.
The 57-year-old and her husband, Stuart, were enjoying the winter sun in Phuket, Koh Samui and then Krabi when they decided to embark on a pony trek along the beach.
However, the receptionist from Norfolk fell from a horse and ended up in hospital.
This then led to a nightmare saga, seeing Joanna facing a £60,000 medical bill and getting stranded in Thailand for 11 weeks.
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While she does have travel insurance, the company, JOURNY, wouldn’t cover the cost of her bills due to the activity.
“One minute I was on the back of the horse, the next I was laying on my back on the ground,” she recalled. “I’ve got no recollection of how I got there.”
Joanna assumed she had just winded herself and was driven back to her hotel. But as her pain increased, she was rushed to hospital where doctors told her she’d broken her back in three different places.
“Me and Stuart were both terrified, we didn’t know if I’d be able to walk or move again, or if we’d be able to get home,” she explained.
“I went into emergency surgery, and thankfully, I do have full movement, which is an absolute miracle.”
Joanne explained she had spinal fusion surgery and reckons she has ‘seven different screws’ in her back ‘holding it together’.
“Our insurance won’t cover us, they say horse riding is a high-risk activity, which I had no idea about,” she said.
“We had to fund all of our medical treatment ourselves; it’s cost us £60,000.”
Joanna said the ‘ridiculous amount of money’ is their ‘life savings’.
She ended up spending three weeks in hospital before moving to hotel until she was fit to fly.
However, during that time, she contracted Dengue fever. This mosquito-spread infection carries symptoms including high temperature, severe headache and swollen glands and there is said to be no cure.
Joanna said she was so ill with it that at times she wasn’t sure she would ‘pull through’.
The NHS say of Dengue:"It's not usually serious and often gets better on its own. Some people get a more severe type of dengue, but this is rare."
Joanna spent even more time in hospital, stranded in Thailand for 11 weeks in total before she could finally fly home earlier this month.
“I can’t describe how it felt to finally be going home, there was so much relief and excitement at finally being able to see family and friends again,” she added.
Using a walking frame at the moment, Joanna hopes to be fully recovered within the next three to six months.
Her friends and family have set up a GoFundMe to help with her medical costs as she said: “We can’t believe the generosity of people that have contributed, it’s down to them that we’ve been able to get the funds to get home.”
LADbible has contacted JOURNY for comment.
Jess Battison