Bring Suraya Home

Suraya is an 18 year old Student at the University of Portsmouth and Part time Sales Assistant at JD Sports. Anyone who knows Suraya knows she is the bubbliest, most hilarious, hard working and kindest person in the world!

Last week, Suraya travelled to Egypt as a quick girls break with her two friends Natasha and Khiara. She was incredibly excited for this trip as she couldn’t wait to go away and have the best time with two of her good friends. However after arriving in Egypt, Suraya started suffering from some headaches and was quite tired but didn’t think too much of it as it had been a very busy period of uni and work so we all thought she just needed a little break to recharge. As the holiday went on, her condition slowly deteriorated and she became more feverish, more fatigued and the headaches worsened.

With Tash and Khiara becoming more and more worried with how ill Suraya was becoming, they took a trip to the hospital just to be safe. Upon arrival, the doctors and nurses gave Suraya a check up taking her vitals and trying to understand why she had become so poorly in such a short amount of time. She was then admitted for 24 hours. Suraya was taken for some CT scans for her head to try and determine the cause of these headaches and following the first ones the doctors believed she had an acute subdural hematoma (a bleed on her brain). The following day the doctors informed us she would an emergency surgery to relieve the pressure on her brain. By this point, Suraya had gone downhill massively, not being able to do so much as even tell us her name or respond to anything but pain.

Her parents, Vicky and Aaron, had to fly out instantly to be with her and not arriving until after her surgery.

Following the surgery, the doctors discovered rather than suffering from a bleed, it was instead an infection on her brain (encephalitis) and if found even three hours later, could’ve been fatal.

Thankfully following the surgery, Suraya has come quite far and made improvements, becoming a lot more aware of her surroundings and talking briefly.

Whilst in Egypt, she has also been diagnosed with Rheumatic Heart Disease and therefore will have to be under a Cardiologist for the rest of her life.

Suraya is a beloved member of her team at Portsmouth JD and a best friend to us all! With the travel insurance company giving the family a hard time, we’ve decided to set this up in order to help raise some funds to take the financial worry away from them and to support them in this tough time.