Two Oklahoma college students’ dream vacation to Mexico quickly shifted into a nightmare when they fell violently ill from water at a resort bar as doctors feared they may have been laced with a dangerous substance.
Kaylie Pitze and Zara Hull arrived in Cancun last Thursday to enjoy a planned vacation they had made with a group of friends, according to KOCO.
Their trip started out smoothly until they went to the resort’s pool bar on Friday with their boyfriends and both ordered a glass of water.
The two Oklahoma Christian University students suddenly started to slump over in a daze, according to the outlet.
“The last thing they remember is they had asked for a glass of water,” Hull’s boyfriend’s mother, Stephanie Snider, told the outlet. “Their heads went down. They slumped over on the bar.”
Snider claimed that Hull began experiencing “jerking movements” soon after drinking the water.
Unable to walk, the two college students were taken back to their room in wheelchairs.
“We were out, couldn’t walk, couldn’t talk, couldn’t do anything,” Pitze told News 9.
Pitze recalled it “hurt” to open her eyes and “was very nauseous” and “couldn’t move” the next morning.
Meanwhile, Hull suffered stomach convulsions and was rushed to a Mexican hospital.
“I started having convulsions in my stomach, so they called 911,” Hull told News 9.
But the ordeal went from bad to worse when the hospital she was taken to demanded she dish out a $10,000 deposit to begin her treatment.
With her seizures continuing, the young college student had no choice but to lay out the money, she said.
“It’s so scary because, there’s times, I am like am I going to make it out of this?” Hull shared.
Mexican doctors intubated Hull, and she then received a CT scan and was placed in the ICU, according to a GoFundMe set up for her medical expenses.
At the same time, her boyfriend, Jake Snider, paid $200 to stay overnight in a hospital room.
“The hospital was NOT treating her; they were pumping her full of so many drugs to keep her sedated,” Snider claimed in a Facebook post on Monday.
“They intubated her and told Jake it was ‘sedation’ for the MRI. There was no reason to sedate her, let alone intubate her. We knew we needed to get her out and back to the US.”
The foreign hospital then demanded another $25,000 “by Sunday morning to continue treatment or $5,000 to release” the Oklahoma college student.
Hull’s family and friends contacted the US Embassy, advising them to get her back to the US immediately to receive proper care.
“We contacted the US Embassy and were told they couldn’t do anything to help as long as she was in the hospital, so they gave us contacts of people to help with transporting her out of the hospital and Medical Flight people to contact,” Snider wrote.
Hull’s family was forced to shell out a $26,000 deposit for her medical evacuation back to the US.
“The evacuation number is about $60,000, at this point,” Hull’s mother, Rilee Works, told News 9.
Fortunately, a generous family friend of the Hulls picked up the tab, and the young college student was med-flighted to a hospital in Dallas Saturday night.
Pitze and her boyfriend arrived in Dallas on Monday and immediately rushed to check on her best friend in the hospital.
Though they are both safely back in the US, how the two girls became so ill remains a mystery to doctors.
“We don’t have a lot of answers, we don’t know a lot, we don’t know what she was given in their hospital down there, we don’t know what she was given at the resort,” Hull’s mother told the outlet.
Doctors in the US suspect Hull’s and Pitze’s water may have been spiked with synthetic fentanyl, according to News 9.
“There’s no other explanation for this. Two girls don’t just drop at the same time,” Pitze told the outlet.
Hull shared that she was “beyond blessed” for all the love and support she received during her unexplained illness abroad.
She is currently still recovering in the hospital but still has “no memory of what happened since she had that drink at the resort,” Snider wrote in an update Tuesday.
As they search for answers, Pitze has warned others to be careful while traveling.
“This could happen to anyone,” she told the outlet.
