'We're working class people, how are we supposed to pay?': Family of sick British grandmother stuck in Florida hospital with no travel insurance hit back at critics of their fundraiser to fly her home for Christmas
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With her health in decline, 76-year-old Patricia Bunting was determined to have one final foreign holiday with her grandson William, who is 23 and has autism. 'She wanted to see him happy and to make memories,' says Emma Bunting, Patricia's daughter. 'She knew it would be her last holiday abroad and she saved up for nearly three years for it.'.
![[But Patricia has been hospitalised since November 23]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/19/15/93321163-0-image-a-92_1734623324317.jpg)
Mrs Bunting, a former cleaner and factory worker, receives the state pension and, since her bus driver husband Joseph died of a heart attack in 1993, a small widow's pension. The pair were joined on their three-week trip to Walt Disney World in Florida by her unemployed sons Paul, 40, (Emma's twin brother) and David, 42, who both live with their mum in Wigan, Greater Manchester.
![[Five days before her scheduled flight home, on November 23, Patricia passed out in her hotel bathroom and was rushed to Orlando Health Dr. P. Phillips Hospital]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/19/15/93321165-0-image-a-94_1734623330456.jpg)
'It was her 21st trip to the US since she first went with my dad in the late 1980s,' adds her daughter Emma, a cleaning supervisor, who remained at home with her younger son Joseph, ten. 'She loves it there - the people, the food, the weather. She always took out travel insurance and never had to use it.
![[Patricia collapsed during her vacation to Orlando]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/19/15/93321153-0-image-a-95_1734623333763.jpg)
In early 2022, however, she was diagnosed with the lung condition chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and had started using inhalers to help her breathe. November's holiday was her first trip to the US since then. 'She also uses a walker or a wheelchair to help her,' adds her daughter. 'She has artrial fibrillation, too, a heart condition that causes an irregular heart rate.'.
![[She is stuck in a Florida hospital with no insurance as the bills rack up, so her family launched a fundraiser to help]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/19/15/93321157-0-image-a-96_1734623335738.jpg)
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