In the blink of an eye, Jennifer’s world collapsed on top of her; literally.
On what was supposed to be the holiday of a lifetime – from visiting Mount Fuji in Japan to island hopping in the Philippines – nothing could have prepared the 32-year-old Queenslander for what happened during a village tour on February 15.
Jennifer was on the last leg of a three-day island boat tour from Coron, located in Palawan, with a small group of travellers.
She was returning from a village tour where the group played basketball with locals and experienced the local culture.
As she made her way across a makeshift platform toward a bridge connecting the beach to the ship, Jennifer’s laughter quickly turned into horrified screams as the ground beneath her collapsed.
While following the line, the cement blocks and wooden planks beneath them suddenly collapsed.
Without warning, Jennifer was thrown into the water and pinned between large, sharp concrete blocks.
Jennifer was trapped with only part of her face exposed allowing her to continue breathing.
“We had the best time,” she said, crying.
“Then all of a sudden…I was just screaming.
“The platform collapsed under my feet… We heard it collapsing, but we couldn’t understand the sound. I saw the person in front of me landing in the water, then another… and before I knew it I was trapped under the cement in the water.”
She screamed in pain as she gasped for air, and others on the tour rushed to help free her legs from the debris that was pinning her underwater.
Crying from her hospital bed in Manila, Jennifer said people on the tour worked desperately to remove concrete boulders.
But as she lay in the brown water gasping for air, she was sure she wouldn’t make it.
“I had to tilt my head back so we wouldn’t go into the water and so I could breathe,” she explained.
“My legs were trapped…I was just screaming. I was in survival mode.
“While people around me were trying to help, I could feel it crushing me more and more, and I literally thought I was dying. It felt like there was a bomb… I couldn’t understand what was happening.
“It was like a war zone.”
It took several people to get Jennifer from the rubble to shore, where the extent of her injuries to her lower legs was revealed.
The shaft pierced her leg, causing severe damage to her ankle, and as Jennifer explains – the pain felt like she was “losing her legs”.
“I see this pole coming out of my leg, my ankle… the skin right around my foot,” she said.
“They lifted me into this boat, and I was just screaming at them to cover the wound and stop the bleeding. I could see the muscle in my leg, and all this blood.”
Without any painkillers, Jennifer begged to be taken to the hospital. But because they were on a small island, she was instead transferred to a small medical center for treatment.
“I lay down on the kayak and put my hat on top of my head… I didn’t want to get hit,” she explained, adding that everyone on the tour was “shocked” but she was the only one seriously injured.
“I was screaming at everyone to put on gloves… I was panicking. The room was full of all these people speaking this language that I couldn’t understand. They put some kind of pill in my mouth, an antibiotic. After that, they put me back in the kayak and on a boat that was ready to take me to the hospital.”
Without any painkillers and “constant bleeding,” Jennifer boarded the tour boat for the arduous two-and-a-half-hour journey to the nearest hospital.
Once there, she was transferred to a truck and to what Jennifer described as a small island hospital.
“They looked at my bandages and then wrapped them back up with the same things they had been on for hours,” she explained, adding that they wanted her to have an X-ray another 40 minutes away.
She insisted nothing was broken, and was given a local anesthetic before being stitched up. The medical staff said she would be able to walk that day, and even return to work within two weeks.
After her phone was completely destroyed by water, Jennifer was unable to contact her family, friends or her insurance company for help – meaning the minimal treatment she received had to be paid for out of her own pocket.
After receiving treatment and returning to her hostel, friends she made during the boat tour came to help her.
She explained: “My leg was covered with a plank of wood… I was in severe pain.”
After finally contacting her family and friends who were able to arrange travel insurance for her from Australia, Jennifer was flown by air ambulance to Manila, where she remains.
“I was only given paracetamol,” she explained.
“I’ve needed three surgeries and to clean my wounds, as there was a parasite in my leg from the shaft. My right ankle is cracked where all the skin has come back, and I’m taking antibiotics non-stop to kill this thing.” [parasite] “Inside me.”
A GoFundMe page has been started on behalf of Jennifer, who will likely remain out of work for several months to come, with significant rehabilitation and continued care needed.
Jennifer said that while she awaits confirmation of the medical evacuation from Manila to Brisbane – which she hopes will happen within the next week – she has received good news that the parasitic infection has officially disappeared.