Northern Ireland grandmother left fighting for life after flying to Dubai to help pregnant daughter
A Northern Ireland mum has been left fighting for her life in intensive care in a Dubai hospital after falling seriously ill there while visiting to help her pregnant daughter.
Mum-of-four Lesley Poots, 58 and originally from north Belfast, developed sepsis after getting a stomach infection. She had travelled to the United Arab Emirates earlier this month to help support her daughter, Lauren, who has lived there since 2017.
Lesley now faces a possible liver transplant, which could cost up to £1million. As she lacks medical insurance, Lesley's family, who are from Carrickfergus, launched a fundraising appeal on GoFundMe over the weekend with a £100,000 target as her care at the city's Mediclinic Parkview Hospital currently costs around £15,000 a day. By Monday afternoon, over £50,000 had been raised.
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Lauren, 33 and five months pregnant, says her mum's trip to Dubai was last minute, meaning she forgot to book travel insurance:.
She told Belfast Live: "Mum has no private health insurance. She just wasn't thinking about that at the time. I had rung her as I was worried about my pregnancy, which has been challenging so I needed help with my other children. She dropped everything and flew solo from Dublin to Dubai on September 10th.
"The whole house was struck down with a sickness bug and mum was the last to catch it. She started to show symptoms on September 15. She deteriorated massively last Friday and we took her to hospital and she was admitted for fluids.
"She was let out later that night and on our return from hospital, we were all tired and went to sleep to let mum rest. But on Saturday morning the unimaginable happened and we found mum unconscious and unresponsive in bed. The ambulance arrived and they worked on stabilising her and said her condition was critical.
"On our arrival into A&E the doctors rushed to do testing and confirmed that she had sepsis, blood poisoning and her organs were failing. She was rushed to ICU and they worked on her for two hours, stabilising her and keeping her alive until they decided on a treatment plan."
Doctors told the family that Lesley was only minutes to one hour away from death when they found her and if the paramedics hadn't reacted as quickly as they did, she could have died.
Lauren added: "Mum is on a ventilator now and they have fitted a central line to her heart. She has started kidney dialysis and has severe liver failure. We were informed that she’s too ill for us to stay with her and we had to leave. This is mum's worst nightmare and I know she would be scared and wouldn’t want to be left alone. Our family is due to arrive from home later today (Monday) as she is critical.
"We have been told the odds are against us but when we are dealing with life or death, if she has a chance to survive this we have to try and do everything we can. We already paid £15,000 in the first 24 hours just for her to be seen in A&E and admitted into ICU. The hospital bills are only starting and they are mounting."
Lauren says the family have been overwhelmed by the generosity of others after they started their online fundraiser: "We are embarrassed to ask for help, but right now I’d do anything to save her and spend more time with our mum. Right now we suspect medical bills to be £100,000s and if mum recovers we will have to fly her back to the UK.
"We will do what it takes to make sure we have funds in place for her to fight this. Please pray for our mum. She is too young to go and we need her."
You can donate to the family's fundraiser here.
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