A woman is in serious condition after falling down a flight of stairs because an infection she got from mosquito bites.
Emma Hickey and partner Stephen Brougham were on holiday in Tenerife with their two children when the 42-year-old woke up with a ‘really bad case’ of mosquito bites and had to go to hospital.
She was given injections to get through it and ‘soldiered through the holiday’ for the children’s sake, but on 23 June Emma said she was feeling dizzy and then fell down the staircase of the hotel the family had been staying at.
The woman struck her head on a concrete step, with Stephen saying it was ‘horrific’ to see his partner convulsing on the steps.
She was rushed to hospital and a scan showed she had suffered a bran bleed and neck fractures, with her being put into an induced coma to recover.
\Emma Hickey and her family were on holiday in Tenerife when she became unwell after being bitten by mosquitoes (Kennedy News and Media)
Dublin man Stephen said it may be ‘a very long time’ until Emma is well enough to return home and he doesn’t know whether his travel insurance will cover the medical costs.
“She was feeling a bit dizzy and she collapsed and fell from the second last step of the upper staircase down below onto the other set of stairs head-first without raising her arm to protect herself,” Stephen said, explaining how their ‘lovely family holiday’ had turned into ‘a living nightmare’.
“She passed out on the steps and started convulsing, she was in a terrible state.
“It’s been horrific because I actually witnessed the fall and how bad the fall was. That’s a mental scar that I’ll never forget. Words can’t describe how bad it is.”
Emma got a prescription for the mosquito bites, but she fainted and fell down a flight of hotel stairs (Kennedy News and Media)
The Dublin man added that doctors have told him there might be ‘secondary issues’ and he hasn’t been told what impact the pressure on the brain Emma has suffered will have on her when she comes out of the coma.
He said that the mosquito bites numbered in the ‘dozens and dozens’, and had been ‘draining the life out of her’.
Stephen’s now looking for somewhere he and his children Sophie and Bobby can stay in Tenerife, and said that his health insurance was ‘making us jump a few hoops just before they commit to whether they’re covering us or not’.
He said: “We know that hospital is $1,400 a day so we’re going to have a significant medical bill.
“The hotel we’re staying in at the moment is an expensive hotel. Then just feeding the kids and keeping them occupied. I’m not working now because I’m over here.”
Emma’s partner Stephen and their children are stuck in Tenerife while she is in a coma after sustaining a severe head wound in her fall (Kennedy News and Media)
He also took the time to thank people who’d set up the fundraiser, saying he was ‘lucky to have friends and family like that’ and said that the donations were ‘very important’ because they looked set to be in for a long wait while Emma recovered.
“It could be a very long time that we’re over here with her until she’s in a position to fly home,” Stephen said.
“We need to be over here by her side and we don’t want to go anywhere without her.”
He’s said people should make sure they get travel insurance as ‘the hospital won’t do much if you haven’t got it’ and for holidaymakers to protect themselves against insect bits as they hadn’t ‘ever considered how bad a bite could be’.
Featured Image Credit: Kennedy News and Media
