A mum who was thrown from a quadbike and suffered a brain bleed has warned others to 'read the small print' after she was forced to fork out £5,000 to be treated in a hospital which felt like 'prison'.
Louise Keen, 38, was enjoying the last few days of a week in Halkidiki, Greece, for her cousin's wedding when they decided to hire quadbikes.
Nurse, Louise was sat behind partner Jamie, 32 when the couple from Carlisle, Cumbria, were suddenly thrown off as the quad inexplicably lost control on June 6.
Despite rushing to the local hospital with a serious head injury, Louise was told there was no CT scanner and was forced to return to the hotel.
But as the group began preparing to fly home, Louise became more unwell, feeling so dizzy and nauseous that she couldn't bear to open her eyes to the light or even walk.
After securing a referral from a local GP to another hospital, scans revealed Louise had a bleed on the brain and would need to be admitted, but she claims the conditions inside were "horrendous".
She told The Mirror : "The hospital itself just reminded me of a prison, it was proper basic facilities, stone floors and walls with metal doors, it was horrible.
"I wasn't allowed visitors. I remember going into this room and there were six beds.
They never once brought me any water, which I thought was strange and then I noticed all the other women around me had brought their own bottles of water.
"There were no curtains around the beds for privacy like we have here in the UK.
"The woman in the bed next to me had just had major abdominal surgery and when they were doing her personal care they were just stripping her down naked and washing her in front of us.
"There was no soap in the bathrooms and I didn't have anything with me so I couldn't wash or even brush my teeth for the first few days.
"At lunchtime, they would bring you a meal but I can only describe it as a bowl of oily liquid with tiny bits of pasta in it. That was it with a tray with a spoon. I couldn't eat it, it was absolutely awful.
"I asked if I could go to the shop to get something to eat and they told me I wasn't allowed to leave the ward.
"I asked if I could send someone to the shop to get me a sandwich and she said no because 'if you were to get ill we wouldn't know whether it was the food'.
"It just made me think we have so many people fault our NHS but what we have here is 5* compared to what it's like there.
"I would never wish that experience on anyone."
The group had not been drinking and were driving on a straight road back to the hotel when the quadbike suddenly jerked to the left and threw the pair into the air.
After landing on her head, Louise suffered a fractured skull and horrified Jamie even 'believed she was dead', before she regained consciousness and began gasping for breath.
But the mum claimed doctors seemed more interested in taking payment than checking her head injury.
"Neither of us know what happened, whether it was sand in the road or a problem with the bike, but all of a sudden it went flying to the left and I thought 'we're going to crash'.
"All I remember is being wheeled into this x-ray room but the first thing they wanted was my bank card.
"I was so poorly I didn't even think to ask how much it would be, it was just a case of do whatever you need to get better.
"They had sent Jamie away with just superficial cuts and bruises. I knew I had a bad head injury but they told me it was likely just concussion.
"I could barely walk I was being sick and felt so dizzy. I had really bad sensitivity to light that I couldn't even open my eyes.
"We knew I couldn't fly like that so my cousin and her husband managed to get me another appointment with a local GP.
"Straight away he said you need to go back to hospital you could have a bleed on the brain."
Louise was admitted and kept on bed rest until she was fit enough to be discharged, but faced another battle to secure a final CT scan with English results, to prove that she was fit to fly home.
Finally after a near-month long ordeal, the couple hopped on the first UK flight to Birmingham and arrived home on Saturday morning (June 25).
But after learning that quadbiking was not covered in her travel insurance policy, she has been left out of pocket by and estimated £5,000 in medical bills and other expenses.
The ordeal has left the family so traumatised that they have even decided to postpone a big trip to Mexico which they had planned for next year.
She said: "Before you get insurance read the cover, read the policy, because you just don't think.
"We hired those quadbikes not even thinking anything like is this covered in the insurance we didn't even think about whether we were covered.
"It was just assumed that anything that happens to you when you're out there you would just be covered for.
"When I got home I looked at the policy documents and I found an email with a 47-page document.
"Somewhere in the middle of there was an bit that said 'below are all the activities covered in this policy... if there any activities not include in this list that you wish to participate in please call to discuss further cover'.
"It's made us scared to go away again, we will go on holiday eventually but right now it's just too raw and we can't afford it."
Louise is recovering at home and has already made an appointment with her GP to get a final check up on her head injury.
