My holiday from hell: I arrived in Corfu with a fever – and everyone around me began to panic | Life and style

In the heady days post A-levels, it felt like a great idea to spend all my hard-earned Saturday job wages on a girls trip to Corfu. I felt sure that what lay ahead was the classic rite of passage holiday of sun, sea and Sex on the Beaches. What happened next may not sound so surprising this side of a global pandemic, but in 2009 it felt like something out of a sci-fi horror film.

I didn’t feel great on the drive to Bristol airport, but explained it away as motion sickness; I tried to sleep it off on the plane, ready to start the party when we landed. At Greek passport control, there were heat-sensitive cameras to check for anyone with a temperature, due to the growing swine flu pandemic. As my friends walked through, they appeared on the screen as shadowy grey figures. I showed up lurid green, indicating a high temperature. Immediately, it was panic stations. I was rapidly ushered into a side room alone, then rushed away in an ambulance. The party, it appeared, would not be starting.

The rest of the experience exists in my memory as a surreal series of bizarre vignettes, none of which I can guarantee with 100% accuracy, as by this point my temperature was soaring and I was growing increasingly feverish.

On arrival at hospital, I was extensively poked and prodded. The language barrier meant I had no idea what was happening. Blood ended up splashed across the floor during an attempt to extract it from my arm, leaving me with several puncture wounds, a huge black bruise and increasing levels of panic. The only English words the medic appeared to know were: “Oh shit!”

I was left alone in bed in a room with no air conditioning despite the blistering Greek heat, just an open window. I fell into a fevered sleep, waking up repeatedly, concerned I’d wet myself, only to realise I had sweated through the sheets. My period then arrived unexpectedly, adding to the exponential grimness of the situation.

At one point, I could faintly hear someone calling my name, initially thinking it was a fever-induced hallucination. Finally hobbling to the window and looking down into the car park – strewn with rubbish, abandoned medical equipment and wheelchairs – I found my friends had somehow tracked me down, and were calling up to me as if I were a sweaty Rapunzel. This was the only way we could communicate for some time as our phones struggled with Greek phone networks.

I was required at various points to take my own temperature, at one point even shouting it through the door to a nurse. I was given various unidentified pills to take, as well as being injected with unknown medication, the used syringes then left on my bedside table.

Ultimately, it was decided I wasn’t “patient zero” after all and was moved to a public ward. I remained on an unnecessary drip (I had no trouble keeping fluids down), which made moving anywhere difficult – imagine wrestling with a wonky trolley that’s also attached to you intravenously. It was easier to pick up the whole stand and scurry down the corridor carrying it to the bathroom, then manhandle it into one of the cubicles (which also seemed to act as an unofficial smoking area).

I never did find out what was wrong with me – the stack of medical notes I was handed at discharge a few days later were all in Greek. But I did finally make it to the resort – although I had to stay in the shade, with not a fishbowl cocktail in sight.