The Mail — A 25-year-old holidaymaker is in a coma fighting for her life after a night out ended in horror during a girls’ trip to Greece.
Laurie Jay Balfour was with her friends in a nightclub in Zante (Zakynthos) when a 15 stone (95 kilo) gas canister fell on her head while they were dancing.
She was airlifted to a hospital in Athens by an army jet where medics had to remove part of her skull to perform emergency surgery to save her life.
Laurie, from Edlington, Doncaster, was two days into the holiday with friends Claire Tomlinson, Amy Renton, Billie Taylor and Lauren Brown when three of the group visited a nightclub on the Laganas strip.
But within minutes of arriving, in the early hours of the morning on Wednesday, August 3 tragedy struck when Laurie suddenly fell dislodging a 15-stone nitrogen canister ‘perched’ on the bar nearby, which fell onto her face.
Lauren Brown, 24, said: ‘Claire turned round and saw what had happened to Laurie and said there was so much blood there that it looked like a murder scene.
‘Her eye immediately swelled, blood was pouring out of her broken nose as she lay there. The bar staff acted quickly, there was a medical centre two doors down.
‘They attached a mask to Laurie to aid her breathing and called an ambulance to take her to the hospital. Afterwards the doctors said that if the medical centre wasn’t there that she wouldn’t have made it.
Lauren, who arrived back in Doncaster on Monday, said Laurie is still fighting for her life but has shown some ‘small signs’ of brain activity over the last 48 hours, giving some hope she will be able to pull through.
Her family will be unable to move Laurie from hospital in Athens and fly her home until she has woken from the coma or begun to show significant signs of recovery.
Lauren and Claire have set up a fundraising page which has already brought in more than £4,000 to help the family.
She added: ‘The insurance company have been informed and are hopefully going to pay out for her medical treatment, but at the moment her parents are having to pay for everything out of their own pockets.’
Anyone wishing to donate money to Laurie and her family should email [email protected] for more information.
