My f iancé died in my arms on a jet the day after proposing to me
A MAN died in the arms of his fiancée while flying back to Britain the day after he had proposed to her in the Grand Canyon.
Martyn Foulds, 55, and Sally Mondryk, 48, got engaged during their holiday of a lifetime and were preparing to visit a number of US cities.
But Mr Foulds, who had battled with health problems at home but had been declared fit to travel, became ill in Los Angeles and the couple decided to cut short their trip and fly home immediately.
When they arrived at Los Angeles International Airport, the Lloyds claims manager collapsed at the check-in desk before their 11-hour flight to Gatwick, but insisted on continuing the journey.
Miss Mondryk said: ‘My instinct was to get an ambulance, but he kept saying he could sleep on the plane and get help when he got home.
‘About four hours in, he was complaining of back pain and struggling to breathe properly.’
A call-out for medics was issued on the flight and two doctors and two nurses came forward to help, but his condition worsened and he collapsed again.
Miss Mondryk: ‘At that point, he said “I think I’m dying”.
‘It was horrific. I got him back to his seat and about another hour in he started breathing funny.’
Speaking from her home in Halifax, West Yorkshire, she added: ‘I had his head in my hands. I was making him look at me – his eyes kept drifting off and I kept asking if he was all right.
‘He’d come back and say he was fine and then he just died.’
The plane was redirected to the nearest airport, an hour away in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Canada.
Medics performed CPR on Mr Foulds until the plane landed, but he was pronounced dead when the plane landed. Miss Mondryk had to leave his body in Canada while a postmortem examination was carried out. It found that he had been living with an advanced 15cm tumour on his bowel, which had not been picked up by previous scans at the hospital.
His bowel had ruptured because of the tumour and he also had metastasis of the liver.
Mr Foulds, a father-of-two, had not been well since June, requiring frequent trips to the doctors and even a stay at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary in July. Doctors found he had a fistula, or hole, between his bowel and his bladder. He was awaiting an operation to repair it, but doctors said he could go on the holiday, which the couple had booked a year in advance.
The pair flew to the US on October 15 to take in the sights of Los Angeles, Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon, but just days into the trip Mr Foulds took a turn for the worse and they decided to return home.
Describing his death on the flight, Miss Mondryk said: ‘I felt numb – it was disbelief, almost as if I was watching someone else.’
She added she was distressed that ‘300 people were watching him die’.
Now Miss Mondryk, who has three children, is waiting for Mr Foulds’s body to be flown back to the UK so she can make funeral arrangements.
She paid a glowing tribute to her fiancé, saying he was a ‘lovely and well-driven’ man who had an ‘infectious personality’.
She said: ‘He cared about everyone else more than himself, which is probably why he didn’t go to the doctor sooner.
‘He had the most booming laugh and everybody has said they will miss that.’
She added: ‘He was very caring and very honest. He’d help everybody else, before he helped himself.
‘I have some fantastic memories of the holiday – obviously some very sad ones too – but he got to show me what he wanted to show me.
‘We had a brilliant future planned and things had just got to where we needed them to be.’
‘I had his head in my hands’