A Dundee teenager has told of the moment she was rushed off a plane to have her appendix removed minutes before taking off.
Charlie Anderson-McGuiness, 18, was escorted off her flight home from New York by police and paramedics after suffering severe pain in her stomach.
She was taken from JFK Airport to Long Island Jewish Medical Centre and had to undergo keyhole surgery to have her appendix removed.
Charlie was later told by doctors that she could have died if she had stayed on the aircraft as her appendix would have burst mid-flight due to the pressure onboard.
Dundee teenager escorted from plane by police before appendix surgery
The beauty therapy student at Dundee and Angus College – who had been working at Camp Wayne for Girls in Pennsylvania for two months during the summer with her boyfriend Blair Hockley – is still trying to find out what caused her to fall ill at the end of August.
She told The Courier: “For the past year or two I have had bad stomach episodes but the doctors have dismissed it.
“I didn’t have bad episodes while at camp but when we were on the way to the airport before flying back, my stomach started hurting.
“I thought it was just nerves and I needed to calm down but I had to sit on the floor in the airport and I didn’t want to move and the medicine wasn’t kicking in.
“We got on the plane and I was apologising to the flight attendants and was saying I couldn’t fly.
“The attendants were not happy with me getting off as it would delay the flight and they thought I was taking the mick, they thought I just had anxiety.
“A police officer had to take me off the plane and I had to get into an ambulance.
“I then got taken to the emergency room where they took blood. They were concerned and said I had an infection.
“I had to get a CT scan and then at 4am a surgeon came and said I was going to have to get surgery as I had appendicitis.”
Teenager ‘could have died’ on flight due to appendicitis
Charlie, who lives in Dundee with her parents, John and Vickie, and four siblings, says she was “freaking out” over the thought of having surgery without her family there.
She said: “I was asking if we could fly home for the surgery but they said I was really lucky it had been caught.
“They were telling me not to go on a flight and said I could have died on the plane with the pressure.
“I was frantically phoning my parents and saying I didn’t want to stay there.
“The doctors were all great – they were calming me down because I was freaking out.
“There was always someone checking on me and my boyfriend got a bed so he could stay with me.
“They also listened to me more than at home.”
Charlie’s surgery would have cost about £30,000 without insurance.
She says Blair had to extend their cover for an extra seven days, while also organising for their flights to be re-arranged.
She finally got home last Wednesday.
The former Baldragon Academy pupil continued: “Thankfully, four or five days later, I got signed off as fit to fly and managed to get home.
“It was the same kind of pain I was getting at home and then all of a sudden they were saying I had to get surgery.
“It was not something I wanted to do without my family.
“I am on bed rest now and I am two weeks behind at college.
“I’ve also got a dance show coming up that I don’t know if I am going to be able to do.”
College student ‘fighting for answers’ after emergency surgery in New York hospital
Charlie says she has had stomach issues for more than a year, but a cause has not been established.
She says doctors in the USA told her the type of appendicitis she had – peri appendicitis –Â could be caused by Crohn’s disease.
However, Charlie claims her GP at Erskine Practice on Arthurstone Terrace has since told her the two are not connected.
She says she is now going to “fight for answers”.
A spokesperson for Erskine Practice said they were not able to comment on matters relating to individual cases due to patient confidentiality.
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