British teenager continues to fight for his life after motorbike accident in Hua Hin

[Jonathan Fairfield]

British teenager continues to fight for his life after motorbike accident in Hua Hin

 

 

A British teenager remains in a serious condition in hospital as he continues to recover from injuries suffered after a motorbike accident in Hua Hin.

 

Aelfin Michel,16, who lives in Hua Hin with his mother and attends a local school, had been to a concert in the town on 30 December when he was involved in a motorbike accident.

 

Aelfin was rushed to ICU where doctors discovered he had suffered catastrophic injuries to his skull. 

 

He then underwent the first of many bouts of surgery including an emergency craniotomy - the surgical removal of part of the bone from the skull to expose the brain - and reconstruction of both his upper and lower jaw. 

 

Doctors told his mother, Emma, that he had no more than a 50 percent chance of surviving.

 

Following the surgery, Aelfin’s condition deteriorated considerably when a blood clot on one of his lungs caused him to have five consecutive heart attacks. Doctors administered emergency treatment for seven hours before Aelfin’s heart started to beat normally again. 

 

And if Aelfin’s situation couldn’t get any worse, he later contracted pneumonia while in hospital.

 

 

Last month, Aelfin was transferred to a hospital in Bangkok where he remains in ICU.

 

While he has made incredible progress - he is now walking, doing physio and talking in English and Thai - he still needs considerable rehabilitation and another major surgical procedure on his skull known as a cranioplasty.

 

The cost of this operation is 1,500,000 baht (nearly 40,000 GBP). 

 

A friend of Aelfin's family told Thaivisa: "Aelfin is making progress and he is truly a miracle to survive 5 heart attacks, pneumonia, dehydration and 5 operations (2 additional operations due to a misdiagnosed fraction in his head that cause air on the brain. We will have a long and arduous road ahead".

 

"Aelfin has to do a great deal of re learning.  He is currently receiving cognitive and physio therapy and this will need be in place for at least the next year.  As well, it looks as though he will permanently loose his sense of smell due to the head injury.  He is currently struggling to control his swallow reflex and is having to learn how to eat by mouth. He is currently receiving 99.5 % of all his nutrition via an NG tube".

 

While Aelfin’s family have paid for his medical bills to date, friends have set up a GoFundMe page to help raise money to meet costs of the cranioplasty and rehabilitation.

 

The page was launched on 7 February and has raised £7,720, with the aim of reaching £50,000.

 

Aelfin’s fundraising page can be found here.

 

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