Family Rush to Rescue British Man With Mystery Illness in Thailand

[Nick Carter icp]

3 minutes ago, Ralf001 said:

Correct, it does cost that in a private hospital.

 

Ive have an invoice to confirm.

 

   All that money and still the hospital wasn't able to cure you 

[The Fugitive]

1 hour ago, Harrisfan said:

Why is it always Brits not buying Insurance?

They've never had to pay for treatment in U.K. I'm sure some honestly believe that treatment would be provided irrespective of their ability to pay because; 'They'd never be allowed not to do that'.

[steven100]

32 minutes ago, Nick Carter icp said:

Showing him drinking in a posh bar and showing him at the Taj Mahal are probably not the best photos to put up whilst asking for  donations .

The GFM has raised 2.300 GBP in two days . Seems like bringing an old man back from Thailand isn't high up on people charitable donations 

my thoughts were exactly the same .....  his photo should have been in hospital with a dozen tubes coming from every hole on his body and maybe a sad miserable pic added,    you have to pull on those heart strings as the Thai's are professional's at that sort of thing.    I'll send 50 baht over if really need be ....  

 

[NorthernRyland]

1 hour ago, richard_smith237 said:

Why ??...  Why is it impacting you in Thailand more than anyone else in the the UK.

 

 

The idea is supposed to be "look at this other farang in Thailand that needs your help. You're both farangs so you should support each other". Really? There's endless Thai people in dire straits in medical emergencies but I'll never hear about their stories here. Just don't sit well with me. Just my feelings.

 

[NorthernRyland]

3 hours ago, proton said:

 

Months to live and wasting his time making miserable vlogs, strange.

His viewers are his friends too it seems. He gets a lot of support in the comments too which probably helps him feel better.Maybe doesn't have any family. Who knows but I'd rather do that then just sit around and die of brain cancer.

[newbee2022]

2 hours ago, Harrisfan said:

Why is it always Brits not buying Insurance?

Because they are either poor or stxxxd

[steven100]

4 hours ago, geisha said:

That’s an old photo from a previous holiday with his deceased wife.

so sad to hear that about his elephant he was close too .....    and what about that woman on the right ?

[richard_smith237]

20 minutes ago, NorthernRyland said:

1 hour ago, richard_smith237 said:

Why ??...  Why is it impacting you in Thailand more than anyone else in the the UK.

 

 

The idea is supposed to be "look at this other farang in Thailand that needs your help. You're both farangs so you should support each other".

 

Is it ??? or is that 'your' intepretation when you read the stories ?... 

 

Whats the idea supposed to be in the British Media in the UK then when the same story is posted ?

20 minutes ago, NorthernRyland said:

Really? There's endless Thai people in dire straits in medical emergencies but I'll never hear about their stories here. Just don't sit well with me. Just my feelings.

I get your point... but there's endless everyone everywhere in dire needs... 

 

How many beggars do you walk past and ignore ?....   we can't help everyone, we can only choose. 

 

But, I do get your point about the publicity here being unfairly bias towards a foreign (western readership) as we are more likely to relate.

 

But, there is another facet to such stories.... let them be a lesson to us and ensure we have insurance cover. 

 

 

[Upnotover]

This story appeared here today.  According to the original mAIl story the family have been panicking and rushing since Saturday.  Presumably by now, 4 days later he's either dead or recovered and his family have arrived.  The chances of an accurate update to this story?   

[Dogmatix]

The longer he stays intubated in a hospital in HH with doctors who have no idea what is wrong, the greater the chance he will be a vegetable, if he survives at all.  First step is to get him to a more sophisticated hospital in Bkk.  I have been to that hospital in HH.  It is very small and they obviously don't have specialists in rare infectious diseases.

 

Obviously taking out inexpensive medical insurance for a short holiday before leaving the UK would have put him and his family in a much better position.

[ukrules]

If I were incapacitated in hospital and for whatever reason the insurance company decided they won't pay I would like to think people could somehow pay for my treatment.

 

I do know people here and they have plenty of money so I'm pretty sure I would be taken care of.

 

In my case I do have plenty of funds available to pay for any treatment for months or longer if needed but it would not be accessible to anyone if I'm unconscious.

The big difference being I could easily pay it back with a simple wire transfer after recovery or from my estate should I die.

But who would know this if I were in some foreign country? This guy could have a couple of million pounds in investments but nobody will be able to even look at his balances never mind cash them in to pay his bills.

 

[richard_smith237]

2 minutes ago, Dogmatix said:

The longer he stays intubated in a hospital in HH with doctors who have no idea what is wrong, the greater the chance he will be a vegetable, if he survives at all.  First step is to get him to a more sophisticated hospital in Bkk.  I have been to that hospital in HH.  It is very small and they obviously don't have specialists in rare infectious diseases.

 

Obviously taking out inexpensive medical insurance for a short holiday before leaving the UK would have put him and his family in a much better position.

 

What better position would it put him in ??? (other than financially)... 

 

In his current state it might be that he cannot be moved, or at the very best moved to a hosptial in Bangkok.

 

If moved to the UK, is could they tell whats up with him ? 

 

Is medical expertise any better in the UK than Thailand ? - IMO the medical expertise in Thailand is exceptional, the only issue is the cost.

 

 

 

 

[ukrules]

8 minutes ago, Dogmatix said:

Obviously taking out inexpensive medical insurance for a short holiday before leaving the UK would have put him and his family in a much better position.

 

Sounds to me that this is what caused his current predicament.

 

His insurance expired, many people think those '1 year' insurance they get with their credit card covers them for the year.

I've met them, they told me about their credit card or bank account related insurance and I gave them the bad news - it's very often extremely time limited - this is a big issue many people seem to overlook.

[GoodieAfterDark]

Very common. Trust the science.

[Kerryd]

ASEAN Now - the Hub of GoFundMe Scam stories lifted straight from quality media sites like the Mirror and Sun.

[newbee2022]

8 hours ago, billd766 said:

And who should pay his bills?

 

Thailand, the British tax payer, Go Fund Me, his previous insurance company, his family, you, me, somebody else?

Dole of course 🤗

[DD86]

10 hours ago, proton said:

Christ, three thousand pounds a day for a bed in a hospital where they don't know what your illness is seems a bit steep.

Yep, Thai health care in a nut shell.

[Xonax]

Unfortunately some hospitals in Thailand are infamous for suggesting expensive completely unneccessary services. I have twice in the same private hospital been suggested a MRI-scan. First time due to seeking help for dependency of migraine medicine and second time for a common food poisoning.  This also leaves me in doubt, if it (in another private hospital) really was necessary to remove my appendix, or if the diagnosis instead simply should have been food poisoning. This hospital did not allow me to eat or drink all day, when the doctor finally late afternoon decided to perform the surgery and the doctor got angry, because I had sipped a few drops from a water bottle, since I felt extremely thirsty.

[Rickman66]

Don't know what all you prickd are against go fund me to save a human life but I do hope you are in need some day and all the people on this chat say fork you!

[Rickman66]

10 hours ago, Eloquent pilgrim said:

 

A brief trip, yet his insurance had expired before his hospitalisation. I feel very sorry for the guy, but your insurance shouldn't expire on a brief trip, maybe he didn't actually have any. 

 

Too many stories like this, we all have to take proper care of ourselves, it's not the responsibility of others

 

 

Is hie family asking you for money,

[ukrules]

1 hour ago, Xonax said:

I have twice in the same private hospital been suggested a MRI-scan. First time due to seeking help for dependency of migraine medicine and second time for a common food poisoning.

 

Yes, this kind of thing doesn't give you much faith in them.

I wonder if they ever do ultrasound scans or go straight for the most expensive option every time.

Why they would suggest an MRI for the above is anyones guess

[NickyLouie]

another deadbeat Brit w/o insurance 

[Ralf001]

9 hours ago, Nick Carter icp said:

 

   All that money and still the hospital wasn't able to cure you 

 

2yrs later iam still alive.

[soi3eddie]

16 hours ago, lordgrinz said:

 

It's also usually fairly easy to extend your insurance, they even bug you to do so before it expires.

 

It is also possible to buy travel insurance whilst already travelling. I did that during Covid times to ensure coverage. 

 

[PomPolo]

Final post for the evening and I'll probably wake up in the morning and regret it, they should just euthanise this guy and cremate him in the closest river cheaper for everyone including the begging go fund me community too many holes in the story but looks like they have got a few UK locals to contribute so all good, that's the UK for you we will give our country away to anyone liars, terrorists, liberals, immigrants even that waste of oxygen Angela Rayner who needs euthanised herself with her bullsht policies

[MicroB]

12 hours ago, ukrules said:

 

I do, but many will simply pop along to the post office and buy the cheapest policy available.

They can be very limited and you really need to read the small print. What good is 30 days cover per trip if you're going for 3 months and you have no idea it's limited per trip. Many are like this.

Like others said you can always increase or even take out new policies if you bother.

 

 

Yeah, I think the standard policy is 30 days per country visited, usually in the small in the reams of documents that typically you can now only access online.

 

I don't think its even dependant if its a cheap policy or not.

 

But you can't take out a new UK travel insurance policy if already on holiday.

 

[MicroB]

10 hours ago, Dogmatix said:

The longer he stays intubated in a hospital in HH with doctors who have no idea what is wrong, the greater the chance he will be a vegetable, if he survives at all.  First step is to get him to a more sophisticated hospital in Bkk.  I have been to that hospital in HH.  It is very small and they obviously don't have specialists in rare infectious diseases.

 

Obviously taking out inexpensive medical insurance for a short holiday before leaving the UK would have put him and his family in a much better position.

 

 

Microbiologist here. Diagnosing an unknown infection is difficult, even for a so-called specialist. The specialist is the path lab microbiologist. The hospital lab will refer samples to the reference lab. Identifying a causative agent is a process of elimination, and the list of candidates is long. Its a process of ruling out. And by the time a diagnosis is made, it might be moot. With a respiratory illness, you can have opportunistic infections, which could be bacterial or viral, with very different regimens. With ARDs, the lung tissue becomes inflexible, and so you literally cannot breath (COVID was a bit different, as the lungs remained pliable but congested).

 

10 years or so ago, a British soldier was home on leave. He had come back from the Middle East, and took his family on holiday to Florida. On the return flight he fell very ill, and upon arrival in the UK, was taken by ambulance to St Barts. He was crashing. WBC and CEA were up, it was an unknown bacterial infection. They pumped im full of broad range antibiotics and he stabilised. The Path lab at St Barts was stumped, so was the Public health lab at Colindale. Samples were sent to Porton Down, where Health England has a lab alongside the Defence lab. They found fragments of bacterial toxins, a smoking gun, indicative of inhalational anthrax. It was suggested that what saved him was his high state of physical fitness, and that he had been previously pumped full of MOD vaccines before deployment.

 

Another anthrax case was a bit better publicised, but also illustrates that infection diagnosis is verty hard. A man in his 50s living in the Scottish borders was admitted to hospital with an unknown infection. He died without it being resolved. The Scottish health people were a bit worried about what it was. They retained samples and sent them to their colleagues at Porton Down in England. Devolution now means the health services are much more seperated than before.

 

In the meantime, there was a funeral. The man was a buddhist convert, and lived alone on a farm, were he made ethnic style drums. His funeral was well attended by people from all over Europe, who were invited to take away keepsakes, so you can guess what kind of lifestyle he lived. While at the time  just before his death, his doctor had described him as being in good health, he did have leukaemia 10 years earlier, so likely immunocompromised.

 

The boffins at Porton Down came back with the answer; inhalational Bacillus anthrax. Bone meal contaminated heroin was ruled out (opium that had been cut with infected sheep bone meal had caused deaths across Europe). They could not find it in the farm buildings (anthrax is a thing on many farms, and subcutaneous anthrax infection is not uncommon). Nothing found in his house, though he had a bat colony in the roof. There was some panic at Porton Down because there was literally nothing in the literature to indicate if bats could carry the bacterium. The bats were innocent.

 

While he lived in Scotland, he was English, and his elderly parents lived across the border. Their house needed to be checked. Attention switch to his drums, as it seemed he brough sheep skin off Ebay, and these might have been illegally smuggled from West Africa. he used to store the hides at their house, Nothing found there. They found the bug at the local village hall where he used to do drum making classes for the local kids.

 

They set up a rig to test whether bacillus spores on a drum could be aerosolised when playing the drum. They  could  not. They could however disturb the spores during stitching of the leather, when you tear it. They concluded he was working the leather closely, and that was it. This is where I came in, as I was consulting the lead scientist on the investigation, to seek advice about how to handle returned instruments coming from a certain country.  I was told don't let the engineers wipe down a dirty but dry internal surface.

 

My mother was rendered a paraplegic within 48 hours of an infection. The cause was never found, as the cultures all came back negative, though latent TB was never ruled out, but it was moot, as the damage was done. This was at a major UK Trust, with a close-at-hand PHL nearby. Its a lesson; treat every sore back seriously, because it might not be just a sore back, and pain killers can depress the immune system.

 

For bacterial infections, you basically have two major approaches depending if its Gram Negative or Gram Positive. The doc could take a sample, and hang around while the lab does the staining, or he can pick an antibiotic, which should show impacts on WBC/CEA quite quickly, and if that doesn't work, switch to the alternative. If he's dealing with antibiotic resistance, then that's harder.

 

For viruses, the options are more limited. Yes, there are anti-virals, but their efficacy largely depends on how soon was the infection, and by the time you are hospitalized, and essentially expressing viral particles, its a bit pointless. They it becomes a matter of supporting the body, and guarding against opportunistic infections, eg viral pneumonia becoming bacterial pneumonia.

 

The really hard one, but rare, are fungal respiratory infections, because the treatments are pretty toxic.

[Ralf001]

1 hour ago, PomPolo said:

, they should just euthanise this guy and cremate him in the closest river 

 

How do they cremate someone in a river ?

[smedly]

keep him sedated, bt139k per day, sorry but I don't trust  these  businesses to act in your favor, this guy is a money making  machine while they keep him sedated

 

cynical I know 

[sabai-dee-man]

18 hours ago, ukrules said:

The problem with yearly insurance is they often limit the length of a trip to some duration.

 

That might be as low as 60 days per trip, or even less depending on the policy.

If he extended his trip it would be easy to break that limit and not realise it unless he read the policy - most people don't appear to read the policy at all.

They just read '1 year insurance' and off they go....

 

No excuse. I've overstayed my insurance for the last 3 visits, and taken out additional cover each time. It's more expensive to take out cover while you're already away, and limited to specialist companies, but such is life.

 

Every "annual multi-trip" i can remember has been limited to 30 days per trip too, so if staying longer, you need different cover. It really isn't rocket science. 

 

There's no excuse, and no sympathy, for being uninsured.