A Galway woman who nearly died from appendicitis in the South American jungle has said she is “still a little traumatised” by the experience. 

Rachel Gotto and her partner, Malcolm, booked a holiday in a former Dutch colony called Suriname. It is sparsely populated and overwhelmingly still a jungle. 

Given they thought Columbia sounded too “touristy”, they decided it was the perfect place to explore. 

“We joined a sort of extreme travel company for a descent down a remote river called the Saramaca River,” she recalled on Moncrieff. 

“The plan was that we would get dropped with two guides, myself and my partner, nobody else. 

“It takes about eight hours to even get to the departure point in a buggy up a river bed, basically.

“The plan was to spend seven days descending down the river with the flow of the river.”

Rachel Gotto. 

Whilst out in the jungle, the pair were enjoying the magnificent surroundings. 

However, Ms Gotto soon began to feel a little ill. 

“I just didn't want to drink water anymore,” she said. 

“I said to Malcolm, ‘It just tastes disgusting.’

“But by that evening, I had become quite unwell.

“I was unsure about what it was; I actually thought I had food poisoning or something. 

“But within a couple of hours, I was in a pretty bad state.”

Aerial of the Suriname River at Pokigron, Suriname, South America. Picture by: Alamy.com. 

Despite this, Ms Gotto considers herself a tough person and decided to soldier on. 

“I'd broken my toe and nearly stepped on a poisonous snake a couple of days before that,” she said. 

“So, it has to be quite tough for me to recognise.”

Fortunately, there was a doctor called Kuhn on the trip with them. 

Had there not been, Ms Gotto is sure she would not be alive to tell the tale today. 

“He'd just done a six-month stint in the hospital in Paramaribo,” she described. 

“I didn't know him at the time but he would be instrumental, in fact, in my survival.

“He said it's either appendicitis or you have something acutely wrong with your gallbladder.”

Trail through the jungle near Botapasi, Suriname. Picture by: Alamy.com. 

At this point, Ms Gotto was in agony and Kuhn informed her the condition was life threatening. 

However, it was raining far too hard for the plane to fly out and collect them and it took some time before a tiny helicopter made it out to rescue her. 

Ms Gotto was taken to a hospital screaming in agony and was taken to a hospital which she recalls was “fairly basic”. 

She was wheeled into a corridor with loads of other very sick people. 

“I'm still a little traumatised by what happened after that,” she said. 

The possibility of flying her out to an American hospital in Colombia was raised. 

However, a local doctor said the trip would kill her. 

Eventually, she was taken into an operating theatre and she distinctly remembers what happened before she was given an anesthetic. 

“This guy comes in to me and he says, ‘You go to sleep, you wake up’,” Ms Gotto said. 

“And I just remember saying, ‘I hope.’” 

It turned out Ms Gotto had a gangrenous appendix. 

“It had spread to my stomach,” she said. 

“I was in sort of in the septic area and it had flooded my stomach. 

“So I was in a big bad way.”

It was a procedure that saved her life and she is now planning her next adventure.

Main image: Rachel Gotto. Image: Supplied.