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A British teen has been left with serious injuries after being hit by a paraglider while on a family holiday in Turkey.
Lily Nichol, 15, from Chester-le-Street in County Durham was on the final day of her holiday with her mother and sister in the resort town of Oludueniz when the accident occurred.
Lily’s mother, Lyndsey Logan, said that they were out for one last family meal at 1pm on Friday 8 November before being due to head to the airport to go home when her daughter was “wiped clean out” by a man paragliding.
Oludeniz is often touted as one the top paragliding locations in the world, attracting many to the almost 2,000m Babadag mountain which has ideal conditions for the sport.
The teenager was left with serious injuries, leading her to be rushed to hospital with a broken back, her tongue ripped apart, and damage to her chin, among other wounds.
Logan told ITV Tyne Tees she was living “every mam’s worst nightmare”.
“The way he came, his feet have hit the back of my daughter and the table’s gone over and she just face-planted the whole thing so his feet – she took the most of his pressure from his feet,” she said.
“They come down really fast. When I picked her up and put her on the floor we had to resuscitate her, she had a stroke and she was unconscious until she got to the hospital and she woke up and thought she was having a dream.”
Lily, who was sent to the intensive care unit, has had to have £7,200 worth of stitches on her eye, chin and tongue, but further operations on her broken back and jaw will cost the family £45,000.
Logan said that while her daughter was in a “really bad way”, the silver lining was that she had no serious head injuries which the family described as “brilliant news”.
With such a large bill for Lily’s operations, Logan said that while she is doing her best to pull the funds together, they cannot afford the medical bill.
A GoFundMe page has been set up to raise money for Lily’s operations, which has already gained donations of over £40,000.
“Our lives have been ripped apart, our little girl’s lying in Turkey,” Logan wrote on the fundraiser. “I just want to get our girl home safe and well.
“I’ll never get this day out of my head seeing her poor face thinking she was dead.”
The mother-of-two said she could not be more grateful for the incoming donations from strangers to help get Lily home.
“I can’t thank anyone enough for the support. It means a lot. We couldn’t have done it without you. But now I’m just concentrating on getting her better and getting her home,” she told ITV.
Alongside her medical bills, the money will be used to book a medical care plane from Turkey to the UK.
For more travel news and advice, listen to Simon Calder’s podcast
