I'm Annie and now 38 years old... it's hard to know what to share with you, what bits to leave out, and what will help you to understand why I've set this page up. But, here's my story:

Can you help me and other women who’ve sustained life-altering injuries to access egg freezing services who’d otherwise be unable to afford it?

When a woman experiences a freak accident during the years when her fertility is speedily dwindling, every application to preserve it on the NHS will be rejected. It doesn’t matter that your body needs you to focus on rehabilitation and receiving ongoing treatment, you’ll be forced to surrender your only chances of being a mother to your own child/ren. I want to do something about that - will you help me?

My Story - How I got here

The 22nd June 2022 will forever be etched in my mind. It was three days into a holiday on the south west coast of Sardinia. I was having a coffee on the veranda with my friend. The villa was perfectly situated so you could see the ocean and smell it in the air. I went to have a shower and that’s all I remember of that day.

I’ve been told that I was driven around to different doctors and there was a delay in receiving the specialist help I required. Hours had gone by and eventually I was helicoptered to a Hospital in the North. The only hospital to have a burns unit.

As I reflect, I feel grateful to myself that I’m open about my epilepsy, and that I will risk someone walking in on me having a shower to ensure that should anything happen to me they can easily check if I’m okay.

It was because of that, that my friend was able to enter the bathroom when they saw water coming out of the room and I wasn’t being responsive. I think most of us have experienced when the water on holiday can be a bit temperamental. Sometimes the temperature of the shower can just change for no reason. On this occasion it was pure fluke that I had a seizure at the same time and I wasn’t able to help myself.

Goodness knows what the sight must have been like for them, but 11% of my body was burned. Some areas to the bone, others to the muscle. The burns must have put me into some kind of shock that was triggering repeat seizures. Thankfully a doctor had the right kind of drug to help stop the seizures.

I remember waking up on Saturday 25th June, I felt like the Michelin Man. I was wrapped in white bandages about 10x the thickness of what I remembered my arm and legs to have been. I was on some kind of IV drip and I wasn’t in pain. So I wasn’t sure what had happened. Everyone was speaking Italian - so I concluded that I was still in Sardinia. A doctor came and said that I was burned whilst having a shower. As I wasn’t in much pain I laughed it all off as some silly accident due a seizure… I was used to having injuries because of a seizure, it’s the nature of being epileptic.

Next thing I know I was taken to a room on the bed, and that was the first time I saw my burns. Once I got back to the hospital bay, I called my mum and with a lump in my throat I told her “Mum, it’s bad.”

Still to this day I don’t know how to describe what I saw. The way each layer of bandage seemed to change shades of different colours. The smell of skin. The oozing and then the site of my legs and hand - colours of skin, muscle and bone that I had only ever seen in books. It was bizarre and yet, somehow, it was now me.

Someone came to me to speak about the options I had; go home or stay. Obviously I wanted to head home. Of the five burn specialist hospitals I could choose from, I picked Chelsea and Westminster and, thanks to my insurance, three weeks later I was flown to the UK in a private plane and accompanied by a medical entourage - I felt mega rich for that day!

I didn’t have the foresight then of what recovery would look like and so conversations with the Insurance company ended there. I didn’t realise that even to this day - three years on - I would still be receiving Physiotherapy, Hydrotherapy, Musculoskeletal Therapy, Burns therapy and Pain management support.

I was soon living a life where I experienced a lot of things for the first time, many of which I never thought I would ever need to learn again: walking, going up and down stairs, maintaining my balance… and there were things that took me a long time to do again independently… walking unaided, being able to stand long enough to have a shower, swimming… to this day there are still things that I cannot do like point and flex my left foot. And another is having a baby.

Technically, I can still have babies because I am still fertile, But even before this, my AMH was at the lowest point of ‘the range’ they measure a woman’s fertility by. So fast forward to now, and like every woman, it’s declining more as each year passes.

However, over the last three years I’ve been through two appeal processes to try and receive egg-freezing on the NHS. But they keep rejecting my applications.

For some reason, I thought that they would pay attention to the nuances of my case and I thought that I would have their respect because I want to ensure that my epilepsy is better managed before I bring a child into this world. Moreover, I thought that they would understand that the last three years of treatments, therapies and hospitalisations are completely out of my control and that in the meantime they would help me to preserve my fertility, because ensuring that I am recovered and seizure controlled is the best circumstances in which to be a mother.

But no, on the NHS you only receive the option of egg freezing if you have cancer or are receiving toxic treatments that can directly impact your fertility.

I cannot describe to you the yearning pain I feel inside, the knots that get tighter as I come away from indulging in being a pretend Aunt for my friends’ children. Their laughs and giggles, the sweet hugs and little hands, and of course their cries and little sad faces when they’re tired or just had enough. Time is whizzing by, my friends and their families are growing, their lives along with it. But life for me hasn’t moved on since I was 34 years old. Currently, I’m in constant battles to live a life that ensures my safety and independence whilst living with epilepsy (and now burns) - from being housed in an accessible flat to being seizure free, to recovering completely and being comfortable in my new skin - it’s all time that I don’t have when it comes down to my fertility.

Thankfully, one year into my recovery I came across The Katie Piper Foundation. I received psychological support and physiotherapy. I felt so validated for feeling like life had stopped. I heard from other burn survivors how the emotional side of this ongoing journey is rough. And that the journey lasts your lifetime, because it is skin. Your body changes all the time and so will your burns.

Being connected to the foundation also gave me an incredible opportunity. Recently, I spoke to Katie herself. I was so nervous - but I shouldn’t have been, she made me feel at ease in an instant. In fact, her advice is the only reason why I am writing this. Beforehand, I thought setting up a fundraiser for myself would be self-indulgent and vain - I also couldn’t connect with the idea that people I don’t even know would care to give to something like this.

Katie’s perspective made me see the reality of my choices. I chose to prioritise speaking to her about advocating for change to fertility regulations and guidelines, and not recognising that this decision was not helping my situation right now. Campaigning can lead to change, sure, but when? Will it be in time for me? Or will the campaign’s successes be too late… or, perhaps the outcomes won’t happen at all in my lifetime.

The dream here is that I will have enough donations to freeze my eggs and establish a fund that will support a network of women in similar situations to advocate for change and support them to receive the fertility treatment they need. Working together for change.