A family is desperately trying to raise funds for their mum left stranded in India after she was flung from the back of a motorbike while travelling with a friend. Roxanne Bolton, from Bude, Cornwall, has been travelling through India and Thailand since January, something she has always wanted to do.
But in the early hours of March 29, her daughters received a call saying Roxanne had been in an accident, with the 39-year-old taken to a local hospital. Roxanne, who did not have insurance at the time, has already had one round of surgery – but medics say she will need several more procedures, with costs expected to be in the thousands. Her daughter, Aleisha Petherick, told CornwallLive: “She was on the back of a motorcycle with a friend and they turned a corner and got into a head-on collision with another motorcycle. She was flung from the back seat into a ditch. When she looked at her leg it was just completely mis-formed. She was in agony.”
The mum-of-five was rushed to a government hospital in Pondicherry before being transferred to the local Pondicherry Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS), where she is currently undergoing treatment.
Aleisha said the owner of the hostel her mum was staying at generously paid for the initial cost of her treatment – and they are now fundraising in order to pay him back. “We’ve raised about £2,500 so far,” Aleisha said. “But the initial surgery is going to cost about £4,000.
“They’ve put pins into her hip because she’s got a fractured hip and her femur is completely snapped in two. She’s also got a metal cage around it, called an external fixator. She’s got that to keep the bone in place and she’s got to stay there for a month to recover from that. She’s then got at least three or four more surgeries to go after.”
The family is currently paying for a private nurse to stay in hospital with Roxanne so she can help translate and understand her treatment. And while Aleisha and her sisters wish they were with her, they say she is being well looked after by the local community. Aleisha, 20, said: “Mum was staying in Auroville, they are an amazing community and they have all come together to help and support her in any way they can.
“They have paid for some treatments when we can’t, they have made a group chat and organised a rota where they can put down when they are free to sit with mum so she’s never alone for a second.”
Asked how her mum is doing at the moment, she added: “She’s in extreme pain at the moment but she’s coping really well for someone in extreme pain. She’s stressed not knowing when she’s going to come home and she’s stressed not being understood. It’s very hard on her emotionally as well, but she’s pushing through it, which is really amazing.”
