Irish mum says 'holiday of a lifetime' turned into 'nightmare' after horror fall
An Irish mum has recounted the harrowing experience of her three year old son needing brain surgery after a dreadful fall in Dubai, turning their dream holiday into "the biggest nightmare of our life".
Deborah Duffy, hailing from Lettershandoney near Derry city, is sharing her story to highlight the critical importance of having travel insurance for unforeseen incidents while on holiday abroad.
Speaking from Dubai, where her son Reuben is still hospitalised, she relayed the frightening incident when her young son had a slip by a pool just one day into their break on Friday (June 6), leading to a brain haemorrhage.
The quick response from skilled doctors at the Saudi German Hospital in the UAE metropolis was crucial in saving Reuben's life, and now there's optimism he'll fully recover after an intense stint in ICU. However, without travel insurance, Deborah's family could have been slammed with a bill running into the hundreds of thousands.
Deborah shared: "We literally just landed in Dubai on Friday morning. We did a few 'touristy' things for the first couple of hours. We travelled late on the Thursday night and we purposely picked that flight just because Reuben is only three and it would be easier for him to travel at night - he would be sleeping," reports Belfast Live.
"We went to see the Burj Khalifa and that on Friday morning, came back to the hotel, and just went to the pool just to see what it was like. We had only arrived a few hours [earlier] and Reuben, just being a three-year-old, was carrying on - throwing shoes into the pool, just, you know, carrying on as a three-year-old does.
"He turned around and slipped, and hit his head. He cried so we were, obviously, comforting him at the pool and then he came around. I said 'you know what it's very warm, we'll go up to the room', and he sat and watched his iPad for half an hour."
However, things rapidly deteriorated, as Deborah elaborated.
"He got very dizzy, couldn't climb onto the bed and, just, I knew as as a mother 'there's something not right here'. I actually got really upset because my son was just not acting right. He was just acting very different, so I rang reception and then reception brought the paramedics up. He [the paramedic] said, oh, 'he's just very tired from travelling' and I was like, 'no, he's not - he's suffering'."
She insisted that Reuben should be taken to hospital in an ambulance - and the Derry woman's persistence would soon prove invaluable for her son's health. The little boy, it would turn out, had been very seriously injured in the fall.
At the Saudi German Hospital in Dubai, Reuben was examined by a paediatric doctor and taken for scans. The scans showed that he had a bleed in his brain.
After undergoing brain surgery at a Dubai hospital and spending several days in intensive care, including time on a ventilator, the young lad has been moved out of ICU to the children's ward.
Deborah shared that he was out of intensive care since Tuesday, adding: "They [the doctors at the Saudi German Hospital] are very, very happy with him," but also noted "But he still has a long road to go. He will remain in the hospital probably for quite a while, and we won't be able to fly home for some time because I will not be putting him at risk at any time."
She stressed the significance of travel insurance, saying: "I just want to tell people the importance of getting travel insurance. It's mental what this treatment will cost - right now it's standing around 140,000 - and if we're here for another substantial amount of time, it will obviously increase."
Deborah also reflected on the suddenness of the accident: "If you look at how this happened - a typical three-year-old - this could happen anywhere or to any family in a split second. He was literally less than half-a-metre away from me when he slipped, fell, and this could happen to anyone."
The Derry woman offered her heartfelt gratitude to the medical team at the Dubai hospital, stating: "Thank God for the treatment he received in this hospital. He had one of the best neurologists in the world and he saved his life. We never thought we would find ourselves in this position. We thought this was going to be a holiday of a lifetime, not the biggest nightmare of our life. The doctors here are just different class. At home, God forbid, he would have probably went to Belfast and maybe he wouldn't have been seen for hours or days."
She continued to heap praise on her family and the larger circle for their support: Deborah remarked that she and Reuben's dad Niall tremendously appreciate the help from Reuben's gran and his aunty during these tough times since the mishap.
The family's crowdfunding initiative has successfully gathered over €12,000 in contributions, a sum Deborah mentioned might go toward hiring a doctor escort when Reuben is well enough to fly back.
Vist the GoFundMe page here.
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