A JERSEY mother who fell seriously ill while on holiday in South Africa – sparking a fundraising campaign across the Island to bring her home – has been taken off her ventilator and released from hospital.
Angela Scott’s family and friends launched an urgent appeal to raise money for medical bills and to bring her home when she was admitted to an ICU in South Africa with pneumonia.
The GoFund Me page has raised over £18,000 so far, while Ms Scott’s healthcare bills have run to over £2,000 per day, amounting to around £29,000, according to friends. The cost of medical repatriation was also estimated to be £75,000.
Ms Scott, who is now able to speak, said: ‘Being ventilated was the worst experience of my life. Being somewhat claustrophobic and fiercely independent I felt completely helpless and reliant on strangers for my daily needs.’
A well-known Jersey carer, Ms Scott spent over a week in an induced coma, then moved from the ICU at the weekend and was finally allowed to leave hospital while still receiving oxygen on Wednesday in the care of her partner, Island ICU nurse Suzette Jansen Van Rensburg.
Ms Van Rensburg said: ‘You cannot believe my relief to have her here, where I can look after her. Angela is so relieved to be out of hospital with the person she loves, where she knows she will recovery quicker. This is truly the best day of my life getting her out of hospital. The next step… trying to get her home.’
Ms Scott added: ‘After being in a medically induced coma for a week, [it was] when I started coming round the nightmare began. I felt people around me were trying to harm me; instead I later realised that they were trying to help me.
‘In the second week after I had come round but was still intubated Suzette tried to explain to me that support and fundraising had started back in Jersey.’
She continued: ‘The more I found out about the fund the more I realised the love and support that can be rallied up from one’s family, friends and even complete strangers, which overwhelmed me.’
Ms Scott explained that she had worked hard to be discharged this week, so that she could finally get home.
‘I could never have done it without Suzette working just as hard on the outside and my daughter Erin Amelia dragging me out of the doldrums more times than I can remember. She was not growing up without her mum,’ Ms Scott said.
‘And of course my mother, who was supposed to fly back to Scotland on 1 October, after becoming very ill herself with Covid whilst in Jersey, she is still in our home looking after her granddaughter and Kiki the dog. She said she will not be happy until she sees Suzette and me walk through the front gate.
‘Of course I am overwhelmingly grateful for the love and support both locally and beyond.’
Ms Scott added that she now faced the challenge of weaning herself off oxygen and building up her strength over the next fortnight, when she hopes to get the ‘fit to fly’ approval from her doctor.
‘Then at last I will be able to again lay eyes on and hold my precious daughter, who has no idea how many times she pulled me back into the light,’ she said.
