A Colorado father is stuck at a hospital in Denmark after contracting a super virus while celebrating his wedding anniversary on an overseas cruise — his first trip out of the country.
Guy Matlock, 64, fell ill while on a 14-day cruise vacation around northern Europe for his 37th wedding anniversary with his wife, Adrien. It was the couple’s first time traveling outside of the United States.
Just six days into the cruise, Matlock started to experience flu-like symptoms that quickly developed into a series of other illnesses, his daughter Moriah told KDVR.
“They pulled into port as soon as possible…They found that he had flu A, pneumonia and sepsis, essentially turned into a super virus within his body and started attacking his major organs,” Moriah said.
Soon after, Matlock went into cardiac arrest on top of lung failure. He was left with brain damage and is receiving treatment at a hospital in Copenhagen, according to his family.
He is not completely conscious and relies on a ventilator to breathe, but is stable enough to fly, Moriah said.
His family is working to raise funds for a medical evacuation to get him back home to the US.
“It’s very isolating in a different country, a country where you don’t know any of the language and there’s so many different societal changes,” Moriah told KDVR.
“His brain just isn’t getting enough stimulation from the Danish society, because he just hears the different languages and he isn’t able to compute.”
An overseas medical evacuation is exceedingly costly, requiring up to $150,000. In the meantime, Adrien has remained in Copenhagen helping monitor her husband while their children — who flew out to Denmark on emergency passports have had to return home to Colorado.
“No one can explain the sorrows that it can bring seeing someone so strong in such a not-so-strong state,” Moriah told WJTV.
“Someone that has been everything that you ever needed in your life and they are incapacitated to not being able to even breathe on their own.”
The family has set up a GoFundMe, which had raised just over $30,000 by Monday night.
