A couple's romantic getaway to Greece turned into a holiday from hell when a quad bike accident left the girlfriend with a broken skull and a bleed on the brain - and trapped abroad for a month. Louise Keen and her boyfriend Jamie Thomson, 34, flew out to Halkidiki in Greece for a family wedding on June 1st June, for a seven-night stay.
But on the fifth day of the holiday the pair, along with another couple on the family trip, decided to hire quad bikes to explore the island. What was meant to be a fun excursion resulted in a horror accident that left them unfit to fly home.
After losing control of the quad bike, the pair flew over the handlebars with Louise landing directly on her head, causing a bleed on the brain and several broken bones. Meanwhile driver Jamie was left with severe back and hip pain and giant bruises.
Doctors warned the 37-year-old nurse that getting on her flight home the following day could kill her due to the swelling on her brain. The pair were forced to stay on the island for a total of 24 days until she was declared fit to fly.
Louise, from Carlisle, Cumbria, said: "We'd been out on the quad bikes all day without a problem and we were heading back to our hotel. We were about ten minutes away and heading down this straight road and there were no obstacles or potholes or anything like that.
"But something happened that made me think we were going to crash. I think the back end skidded out and then after that all I can remember is waking up on the side of the road, it was all a blur.
"Jamie said he can remember the bike losing control somehow and I grabbed onto his t-shirt and then the bike kind of just flipped and rolled and we both flew off over the handlebars. I landed a few metres down the road and hit my head so I was unconscious, my helmet was split in two so I must have taken the impact on my head.
"Jamie said my face was covered in blood and scratched because I broke my nose. He had a lot of injuries around his pelvis and back and he was covered in bruises.
"We still don't know whether it was the quad bike itself. One of the locals said something about the tar on the road being quite sticky and sometimes it can cause problems for quad bikes. We just don't know what caused it."
After some locals called an ambulance to the scene of the crash, the couple were carted off to a medical centre on spinal boards where their injuries were briefly assessed before they were sent to a nearby hospital. There, they underwent x-rays that found Louise had broken her nose and hand that doctors bandaged before allowing them to return to their hotel, believing Louise's head trauma was just a concussion.
But when her symptoms worsened the following day, she went to a hospital in the city where a CT scan revealed she had suffered two bleeds on the brain and a fractured skull. The mum-of-one was then forced to stay in the hospital for observation for four nights to allow the swelling to go down on her brain.
Louise said: "Because of the adrenaline I don't even remember being in pain but when we were in the ambulance going down the bumpy roads my head really started hurting - like the worst headache of your life. A nurse tried to put a needle in my hand and that was sore and then she put the oxygen on my face and my nose was sore and then I realised 'I've got a few injuries here'.
"I was really really dizzy and vomiting and I knew that wasn't great but they thought it was a concussion so they said I could go back to the hotel. The next day, the day before we were due to fly home, I was getting worse - my headache, my neck and I was really sensitive to the light so we went to the hospital again.
"They did a CT scan and then a few hours later they came in and told me I had two small bleeds on the brain with quite a lot of swelling. They said I'd also fractured the bone at the base of my skull that sits right above your cervical spine and I knew that if you break that quite often you end up paralysed from the neck down, so thankfully I didn't break that.
"But where the fracture was in the skull there was a lot of swelling around it and your brain stem sits in that area and your brain stem controls your breathing and heart. So had there been any swelling there that would've been instant death, it doesn't bear thinking about.
"My first initial thoughts were 'am I going to need brain surgery? Am I going to die?' It was just a nightmare." As well as the ongoing worry over Louise's health in particular, the couple had the added stress of discovering that their insurance wouldn't cover them for their medical expenses.
They say they didn't notice a clause in their insurance documentation that required them to declare activities including quad biking and pay an additional cost to be covered. This meant that they were forced to cover the cost themselves but a generous good Samaritan came to their rescue and paid off an unknown sum that brought the remaining balance down to £1,500.
Despite this, they claim the additional hotel and travel costs totalled an eye-watering £5,000 on top of their initial holiday spend, due to bouncing around 11 different hotels during their 24-day unplanned stay. Louise said: "When we went to pay the first bill, they said it was a lot more but somebody had called up and paid some of it for us but we still don't know who it is.
"It's not a family member, we know that, and the only person thought it could be was the owner of the hotel because he was a lovely guy and family members knew him from staying there previously. He paid for my first doctor bill and got us a taxi to the hospital.
"But then with hotels and taxis and all the other expenses I think it's come to about £5,000 in total." After four days in hospital, doctors did another CT scan of Louise's brain and saw enough improvement that she was allowed to go back to her hotel.
She was told to wait 11 days to allow the swelling on her brain to go down more before having another scan to determine if it would be safe for her to fly home. The pair were finally told they were allowed to return to the UK on Friday June 24th and got the first flight home that evening, arriving back to their three worried teenage children the following day.
They now want to warn people about the risks of quad biking and to encourage people to check their holiday insurance policies thoroughly to ensure they are covered for the activity. Louise said: "Getting on the plane and flying was still a bit scary because I was thinking 'is anything going to be happening in my brain while we're flying?' but it was fine.
"It was a big relief when we got back, we were happy just to get home. The whole thing was a nightmare from start to finish.
"I wouldn't go on a quad bike again and Jamie is exactly the same. In fact, it's actually put us off going on holiday again for a while because we're just so pleased to be home.
"I would always say check your insurance policy because you take out insurance and think you're covered but it wasn't the case. I'll be much more cautious in checking the details from now on."
You can donate to the couple's page here.
