Fitness instructor trapped in Middle East awaiting medical evacuation

A British fitness instructor is fighting for her life in a Saudi intensive care unit as bombs rain down on Riyadh.

Laura Storr, 35, from Shenfield, Essex, moved to the desert kingdom in 2020 to help open a boutique gym - only to be struck down two years years later by a rare and incurable lung disease.

The condition, pulmonary veno-occlusive disease (PVOD), is rare, rapidly progressive and has no cure - leaving a lung transplant as her only option.

The Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge has agreed to take her on but her condition is now too critical for a commercial flight home.

Bedbound, permanently tethered to an oxygen tank and coughing up blood, she can only listen as explosions ring out beyond the hospital window.

And with the Middle East conflict sending the cost of her medvac flight soaring to more than £100,000 - as firms price the danger of flying through an active war zone - her family are in a desperate race against time to bring her home.

Her distraught sister, Emily, told the Daily Mail she may only have weeks to evacuate in time for her transplant and has launched a GoFundMe to help pay the eye-watering bill.

'It just feels like we're really on a time limit and it's just horrible. It's just a really horrible feeling. I feel on edge every single day.'

The 32-year-old said her sister, who is normally 'always the life and soul' of an event, has been left 'so unsettled'.

She said: 'Your mind has a lot to play with your body, doesn't it? So, she is just trying to be as calm as possible so her heart stays at one pace. 

'But it's just so hard to just try and tell somebody to relax when you hear bombs outside the window. It's just really, really hard, awful.'  

Their parents, John Storr, 75, and Freda Storr, 62, rushed to Riyadh two months ago to be at their daughter's bedside but are now struggling with their own health issues the longer they are in Saudi Arabia. 

Mrs Storr delayed a gallbladder operation back home to be with her daughter and Mr Storr is now running out of the arthritis and blood pressure medication he takes.

The couple are spending most nights sleeping on a futon or chair in their daughter's hospital room, with their food and transport costs spiralling all the while. 

Emily, a yoga instructor and studio manager, said one night this week her family heard explosions right by the hospital and were told to come away from the windows. 

'It's been very scary,' she said. 'My mum is just so scared.' 

The US embassy in Riyadh was hit by drones earlier this month, as Tehran undertakes retaliatory strikes across the Gulf region. 

Witnesses heard a loud blast and saw flames and smoke rising early in the morning on March 3, with the building set on fire and damaged. 

Emily said her sister, who has 'one of the kindest hearts', first moved to Furjiarh in the Middle East in 2019, and then Riyadh the year after, having previously worked as a spin cycle instructor in the UK for a company called 1Rebel.

She added that Laura had planned to move back to Britain after a few years but was delayed by a life-changing diagnosis two years later.

'My sister's very much into her nature and things like that so she never saw herself living in the Middle East forever,' Ms Storr said. 

But in 2022, she was diagnosed with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), which sees blood vessels in the lungs tighten, forcing the heart to work harder to pump oxygen around the body. 

'Everything from there has just been playing by ear - focusing on her health to get better, to then come back to the UK,' Emily said.

She said Laura tried to make the best of it: 'It's chronic but you can live with it. 

'For example, she went through a stage where she'd be on certain medication for the heart, because the lungs weaken the heart. 

'She'd do her day and then she'd go home and have a big dose of oxygen.'   

At one point, in her determination to keep working, Laura even led classes while on an oxygen tank before her condition deteriorated.

It turned out she had a rare form of PAH called PVOD, which is notoriously hard to diagnose - but rapidly progressive.

'It is is just going to keep getting worse unless she gets the care, the potential lung transplant, or there's this new injection that's just come out as well that sends proteins into the body, which they're trialling on patients with PVOD,' Emily said. 

'But obviously, she just needs to get back to the UK to get settled and to start the next stage.' 

Her sister, however, took 'a really bad turn' three months ago, Emily said. 

She is now almost completely bedbound in hospital, having spent most of that time in intensive care and on an oxygen tank, leaving her unable to fly home commercially, despite clinicians' recommendations to do so.

'Her toilet chair is right next to the bed. The only thing she does is walk to the chair and back to the bed,' Emily explained. 

'She kept hoping that they'd get her into a stable place where she could quickly get on a flight.  

'Now, she's at a place where they know it's not going to get any better, she needs to stay in the hospital. 

'But there's nothing else that Saudi can do for her.' 

The family were told Laura would need to receive a royal pardon for a lung transplant, which would not likely be given to an expat.

A protein injection for the condition is also being trialled on a patient in the UK, where Laura could access it privately.

The fitness instructor is now also battling an infection that is weakening her lungs and heart even further, with doctors desperately trying to drain her body from fluid as she coughs up blood. 

Emily said: 'There may come a certain time where she can't fly. So, it has to happen within this week or next week.' 

As an expat not 'ordinarily resident' in the UK, Ms Storr had to fight to obtain NHS care for the transplant she needs, which she was granted last week. 

The Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge has said it would accept her as a patient - but it is now just a matter of getting her there, with the family's own money.  

They been quoted an eye-watering £108,600 for a medevac flight - a price one firm have warned could rise even more and which the family cannot currently pay. 

'I think it would have been a lot less but then obviously, because of the conflict and the risk, they're charging us this much. But they are finding routes,' Ms Storr said. 

Their loved ones have been so 'beautifully generous', she added: 'My family are trying, we're not a well-off family so everybody's just trying to chip in.'  

But efforts to move the process forward have been agonisingly slow, Ms Storr explained, with the ongoing war making matters even harder.

'The embassy has done absolutely nothing the whole time,' she said. 'Just keep turning them away, they've given them no information.'

A spokesperson for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) told the Daily Mail: 'We are providing support to a British national in Riyadh and are in contact with their family.'