A woman has been left trapped in Dubai due to an £11,000 medical bill. Her husband says he feels "like a prisoner".
Mick White is blaming travel insurance small print for the issue. He and wife Kat were heading home after spending 12 months working in India.
They decided to spend a few days in Dubai to visit friends and look for new job opportunities. But then Kate suffered a seizure, with full body spasms, while she was in the shower.
Several hospital visits have now left the couple, who were already low on cash after their work ended, penniless. They said the British embassy had not helped.
The couple are now left trapped as, they said, one of the hospitals is holding Mick's passport until he pays £6,000 as a down payment of an "extortionate" "payment plan" for tests they "may not have even needed". Mick, who is originally from Doncaster, and Kat, from Glasgow, are now trying to raise money to cover the climbing medical expenses, with one of Mick's pals setting up a GoFundMe because he can't access it in Dubai.
Speaking to the Mirror from their hotel room, Mick said: "I don't know what to do, I feel like a prisoner."
Mick recalled that on April 25 his wife suffered an episode in which she experienced full body spasms, facial contortions and her hands curling back.
He said: "So we got a few days into it [trip to Dubai], she just didn't feel well. And then she had like a fully body spasm, her body froze.
"She was in the shower, so I moved her to the bed. I couldn't even put her in the recovery position, she couldn't bend her legs. And her hands all curled up with the spasm and her mouth changed. And I thought, is she having a stroke?"
They left the hotel they were staying in and rushed her to hospital, where Mick, who has worked for a number of football companies and even ran the Chelsea Academy in South Korea, believed his insurance would cover the cost of the treatment. He told The Mirror that within the space of "eight or nine hours", Kat had been taken from room to room and given "treatment after treatment", which eventually left them with a bill of £1,800.
Within moments of arriving, he said they'd been taken "down to billing" before they carried out any tests or treatments. But the doctors weren't finished with the best part of £2,000 spent and advised Kat to spend another night in hospital for more tests and a drip, which would cost a whopping £3,000.
Unable to cover the costs, Mick explained their situation and Kat was sent home with a batch of tablets and assurance she should feel better in four or five days - but it didn't take long for the illness to rear its head.
"I went out shopping, and came back and she's on the floor," he said. Kat had thought she'd be OK to get out of bed and walk a few paces, but fell to the ground after a "couple of steps".
She was then readmitted to hospital after another episode - and the pair were told she'd need an MRI scan, which left doctors stumped because they couldn't see anything that could cause the seizures. Mick said he heard one of the medics say their insurance covered "everything up until here", but that any future treatments would have to be from the couple, who didn't have a penny to their name.
He added that the travel insurance, provided by Barclay's bank, refused further charges because the specific trip did not start and end in the UK. The claim was not rejected during a previous trip to Saudi Arabia, or raised when they first contacted them following Kat's episode, allowing them to claim several treatments, which suggested it was valid, Mick explained.
By the end of their tour of Dubai's hospital system, the couple were left with an £11,000 bill. Though many officials had told them to get back to the UK quickly, the couple are stuck because Kat needs a fit to fly note and help getting on the plane.
Mick told The Mirror that getting out is even more difficult because one of the hospitals is holding his passport as collateral. Despite the mountain of charges, no one has been able to tell Kat exactly what is causing the episodes, leaving her suffering through weeks of "mental anguish" in addition to the physical pain.
He said: "If you understand the mental anguish that my Mrs has gone through, I've seen it, I'm sat here watching it. I'm trying to help her out and I said to her today, 'we can guess what's wrong all day, but you need to be seen'.
"She had an MRI, but they came back and said the MRI was clear and that they couldn't see what the issue is. They said she might have a virus in her spinal column. That was pretty much the only diagnosis we got working with this."
Mick added that some of the hospitals they've been forced to visit were far from ideal, with grim conditions and neglectful staff.
"On one occasion, I walked into the room, and my wife is on the floor, and there's three orderlies around her," Mick explained. "They've basically gone to catch her, but not caught her and she's fallen. She was screaming her head off, saying 'just get me in bed please, I can't trust anybody but you'."
Kat then told Mick it was the third time orderlies had stood around while she fell to the ground. "It was disgraceful," he added.
In one of the facilities, there was a serious health risk hazard after one of the patient "splashed blood" all over the walls and other locals.
He continued: "We're in the third hospital, £300 for a blood test and consultation. We had to pay that before we could leave.
"And this place wasn't very nice, I'm gonna be honest. So there's people with blood, splashing blood all over the place and on different people, I mean Christ alive.
Mick said he felt like the hospitals in Dubai were an "extortion racket" and that they were "pressganged" into the treatments, many of which were unnecessary in Kat's case.
"It felt like that, yeah they'd come around with three or four doctors and all say 'she needs this, she needs that'. Sometimes my wife actually asked, is this something I really need?"
And they would all say she did. At the last hospital, the doctor said that for someone with insurance, you can go through all the scans and tests in the world, but without it, the couple should head straight back to England "as quick as you can".
When asked how the embassy had helped the situation, Mick said they told him "we're not a charity". According to the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office's website, it says it does not pay for costs like medical bills for British nationals abroad, adding that it provides advice instead.
The FCDO told The Mirror in a statement: "We are providing consular assistance to a British couple in Dubai.”
David Warburton, MP for Somerset and Frome, where the Whites last lived in the UK, told The Mirror his office had been helping with the couple's "desperate situation".
He said: "My team and I are in regular contact with Mr White, the FCDO and the British Embassy in Dubai to seek an urgent resolution to the desperate situation which the Whites are facing. We continue to urge the embassy to give this matter their immediate and critical attention and I’m appealing to the FCDO to advise if there’s anything further that can be done to support and assist the White family."
The Mirror has contacted Barclay's, the Travel Pack Plan insurance provider that Mick had taken out a number of years ago, for a comment. Mick wanted to issue an urgent warning to other British travellers after the nightmare situation they've been left in.
He wrote on the GoFundMe page: "DO NOT take your insurance for granted. [...] I have paid this for the last 10 years with travelling a lot, my first claim is worth nothing. Be aware. Don't go through what we are dealing with right now."
If you'd like to donate to the GoFundMe, you can do so here.
