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Toxic cocktail
Toxic cocktail: Aussie woman's Bali drink 'burnt her from the inside out' | News.com.au
AN Australian woman was flown to Royal Darwin Hospital from Bali in a coma after drinking a toxic cocktail which has killed at least four foreigners.
Jamie Johnston, 25, of Newcastle, is now struggling to speak, can barely walk and her legs are severely burnt after drinking a cocktail called jungle juice at a cafe on the island of Lombok, west of Bali, The Daily Telegraph reported.
“It burnt her from the inside out,” the mother of Ms Johnston's boyfriend Lyn Tisdell said.
“There needs to be more awareness out there about these drinks. Young people going there for schoolies please be careful of what you drink.”
The nurse collapsed at Denpasar Airport in Bali two weeks ago suffering renal failure a day after drinking the jungle juice while with her mum at Happy Cafe on the last night of their holiday.
Her mother, a lawyer, was not affected by the drink.
Ms Johnston slipped into a coma and sustained brain scarring because of lack of oxygen.
She spent two days at the hospital in Denpasar with no improvement before being medically evacuated to Darwin at a cost of $50,000.
Ms Johnston and her mother did not have any traveller's insurance.
Boyfriend of three years Dennis Tisdell 28, said doctors suspected the drink was laced with the chemical methanol sometimes used in the local brew arak, a distilled palm wine.
He said they were told Ms Johnston's mum did not get sick because the methanol was in the tops of the jugs of Jungle Juice.
Four foreigners were among 25 people killed by a tainted batch of arak in 2009.
There were more cases of Balinese people dying after drinking methanol-tainted arak last year.
Mr Tisdell made a mercy dash to Bali to be with Ms Johnston.
He said she is improving slowly but has sustained minor brain damage.
“She can still talk, she is still herself personality wise,” he said.
Doctors are hoping they can fly Ms Johnston to John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle - where she works as a nurse - on Friday.
If you're going to drink arak, get some bloody evac insurance. That turned out to be one expensive drink!
who knew the 50,000 for that drink would turn into dollars!!!Originally Posted by Tiggy
A few things I don't get
If you don't have travel insurance you can not afford to travel?
They ordered jugs of arak, why not stay home & drink metho its cheaper?
She is a nurse?????????aid?????
Her mother is a lawyer, so has plenty of money so doesn't need travel insurance????
I think one of the Indonesian papers has hit the nail on the head
Indonesia doesn't need wino's, drug addicts & drunk bogans as tourist here.
And there all from Australia, I mite start telling people I'm German
hahaha Fred! i still sound like a canadian so I might take that tact and hide my aussie passport ;). I also cannot understand people that travel without insurance. Its like.. $70 or less for a couple weeks - why would you NOT buy it??
Most people new to bali probably don't realise that arak can do a number on ya so I can understand why people drink it. I actually don't mind the stuff (but I always have evac insurance!).
The good thing is all the bogans are going wild and bali bashing all over the net with these 3 incidents this week. Perhaps they will all go to Thailand or something instead :D
One can only hope!
I here Fiji & new Zealand are began friendly
If I told people that I came from NZ they would have no idea were that was.
Did you see this quote by Alex Downer after he became Foreign Minister:
Yes, Thailand is great for bogans also. Who could ever forget the "beer mat mum"."After about 10 minutes as foreign minister I was a little surprised to learn I was `responsible' for miscreant Australians who got into trouble in foreign countries.
"No, no, no, don't get it wrong - drug traffickers, drunks, kleptomaniacs and fraudsters weren't responsible for their own stupidity - I was.
"It's about time that great nanny in Canberra, the Federal Government, turned around and told people they are responsible for their own decisions."
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will sit in a boat drinking beer all day.
If I play with some assumptions of how much arak in the jungle juice (maybe as much as 40%), how much methylated spirits has been added to the arak (maybe as much as 10%) and how much methanol there is in methylated spirits (about 10%), then I think the most methanol you could have in a 250 ml drink of jungle juice would be 1 ml. Wikipedia thinks you need about 10 ml of methanol to be in trouble - so maybe 10 glasses of jungle juice. That is quite a binge. I wonder how close my estimates are to the truth?
Initially it seems odd that others at the same bar did not get symptoms - at least they were not reported. But maybe it is because most people drank much less.
The piece in the report that says mother may have avoided trouble by drinking from the bottom of the jug seems like nonsense to me. But having jugs on the table means that it would be easy to over indulge.
So, Jamie has survived and is now well enough to make public warnings on the possible dangers of mixed drinks.
Full story with photo at Nurse's dire warning to Bali visitors - Local News - News - General - Newcastle HeraldNurse's dire warning to Bali visitors
SAM RIGNEY
05 Dec, 2011 06:59 AM
IT took Newcastle nurse Jamie Johnston six weeks to learn how to speak again after she drank a potentially deadly cocktail laced with methanol in Indonesia.
Recovering from brain damage and kidney failure, the 25-year-old is using the voice she thought she’d lost to warn other Australians about the dangers of travelling to the popular island destination.
Ms Johnston was celebrating the end of the ‘‘best holiday ever’’ with her mother, Lyn, when she ordered a jug containing Balinese rice wine, known as arak, melon liqueur and fruit juice at the Happy Cafe restaurant in Lombok on September 20. The dangerous concoction, which is popular with tourists because of its strong alcohol content, almost proved fatal.
She vomited repeatedly, momentarily lost her sight, suffered brain damage and kidney failure and spent
the next three weeks in intensive care in hospitals in Bali and Darwin.
‘‘I thought I was done for,’’ she said.
‘‘I remember just before I passed out [in hospital] the nurses were screaming ‘What do I do? What do I do?’
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