Raising awareness & funds for surgery to save my wife.

Ty's Back Story

" I have battled internally with myself over and over again. Debating whether telling my story, my TRUE story, would only bring me shame and guilt. Shame because asking for help has become so alien to me. Shame because I should be able to do this alone and not have to rely on others. Shame because of the person I have become at the hands of the neglect from the NHS, but also guilt for bringing a negative light upon an organisation that we traditionally ought to be ‘grateful’ for. I no longer feel any guilt for wanting to advocate for my own safety, the future safety of others and my life.

For the last ten years, I have fought blood, sweat and tears for just one single health professional within the NHS to listen to me. I spent the entirety of my twenties back and forth hospital appointments begging my consultants to help me. I spent 4 years on a waitlist to see a Gynaecologist, only to be misdiagnosed with IBS and told that my symptoms weren’t as serious as they are and then re-discharged from their care. Despite spending days at a time in and out of A&E because I was unconscious from the pain, I was told over and over “it’s JUST IBS”.

Repeatedly denied surgical interventions to see what was really going on. Recurrent miscarriages, losing our daughter, years of infertility, years of being severely neglected by those whose job it is to help you. Consistently told ‘you’re making it up’, ‘you’re exaggerating’ or ‘it’s all in your head’.

I went from entering my twenties with a Masters Degree in Law under my belt, a high-paying job as a Lawyer at one of Wales’ most successful Solicitor Firms, to leaving my twenties battered, bruised, unable to work, career given up, disabled, traumatised and deeply, deeply suicidal. All at the hands of the medical ‘professionals’ within the NHS. My life torn from my grasp. "

November 2023

In November 2023, I made it back to the top of the waitlist to see my Gynaecologist face-to-face. I had waited another 2 additional years for this appointment after a significantly traumatic pregnancy-loss, only for her not to turn up. Instead I was face-to-face with an Obstetric who the following day, delivered my beautiful little niece. This was a significant turning point in my journey because I suddenly became super aware of how important it was for me to find the strength to keep fighting and advocating for myself. And if not just for myself, for her. He informed me that the best cure for PCOS & Endometriosis is to ‘just have a baby’, but to ‘just have a baby’ you have to become pregnant, but I can’t become pregnant because I require medical assistance due to our infertility. But I can’t access that assistance until my BMI is below a certain range. But my BMI won’t come down until I receive treatment for the PCOS. So we’ll refer you through to the weight-management team and go from there. Amazing. Yeah the waitlist for that is around 6 years. I’m sorry, what? So by the time I eventually make it to the top of this list, I’m at least 36 and considered Geriatric and unsafe to undergo IVF anyway.

If he had just bothered to take a minute or two to read through my history, he would see just how hard and long we had been trying to ‘just have a baby’. We left that appointment even more confused, more defeated, more afraid and with a thousand more questions. I begged and begged for them to just refer me for one singular ultrasound scan. By the time they had finally agreed to it, I was rushed into A&E with my large complex ovarian tumour. If they had just listened to me over the last 10 years. If just one doctor had taken the time to listen to my concerns, my symptoms and my worries, it would never had got to this.

March 2024

I was admitted into the GUH A&E department where I was left to fall unconscious repeatedly in pain whilst my mom and husband begged the doctors to help me. I was kept in a wheelchair for over 12 hours as a 12cm complex tumour wrapped itself around my Ovary and Fallopian Tube and cut of its’ blood supply. It was during this time that as I repeatedly fell unconscious, I kept telling my mom that it was all going to be okay because I was going to Rainbow Bridge to see ALL of my babies. Not to worry about me because I was finally going to become a mom. For an eternity. Something no mother or husband should ever hear coming from their daughter or wife. I was so poorly, and in so much pain that I had strangely accepted this was my time and I felt a huge sense of relief from that. It would mean no more living this nightmare.

Whilst I was admitted during this time, I became even more dangerously unwell. I was told I would need urgent surgery to de-tort the tumour and to remove my entire ovary and fallopian tube and that there was a high possibility I would wake-up to the reality that my entire womanhood had been taken from me. It was during this time my husband & mom accidentally caught on my bedside notes that I was being urgently treated and monitored for Sepsis. Something they had not informed us of. No wonder I was so poorly. When confronted, it was completely denied multiple times. It was only when I was placed on a watch-alert that my nurse finally told me the truth. I had gone over 12 hours with no antibiotics because my veins were collapsing. They had no anaesthetists to come to the ward to replace my IV using the Ultrasound Machine. I was stuck with a Cannula in my arm that had been placed into another collapsed vein and the IV solution had leaked into my arm tissue. My fingers were blue and my hand was completely numb. I begged the nurse to remove the Cannula to which she replied ‘Tyanne, you are so poorly right now. We are treating you for Sepsis. You have to keep this Cannula in so we can get these antibiotics into you’. I told her she could either remove the Cannula herself or I was going to rip it out myself as my arm was ballooning. But they had finally admitted that I had Sepsis. I no longer felt that I had totally lost my head or that I was going insane.

We had multiple nurses and healthcare assistants directly come to us during this time urging us to request my medical records. Since then, I have requested and received my medical records which confirms I was moments away from being placed into a medically-induced coma because they could not gain control of how quickly the Sepsis was spreading throughout my body. There are also huge gaps within my medical records where appointments / admissions / entries are completely missing or are showing as ‘deleted’.

I was so afraid and convinced that I was not making it out of that hospital alive. The medical trauma not only from those few weeks, but also from the last decade all came to ahead and hit me at once as I laid staring at the ceiling wondering if I would ever feel the sun on my face again. I started to believe in my soul that I was losing my mind. I didn’t recognise myself or my thoughts. I just wanted to die so it would finally all be over.

My veins were repeatedly collapsing between IV’s and they couldn’t get the antibiotics into me quickly enough to fight the infection. I was going hours at a time with no antibiotics or pain killers because they just didn’t have enough staff to make sure my IV’s were being installed correctly. At one point, I got scrubbed up for surgery and then told seconds before going down to theatre by the consultant that he ‘didn’t feel confident carrying out the surgery as an emergency because it was a weekend, they didn’t have the specific surgeons he would like in theatre with him because they only had ‘general surgeons’ and that the probability of me making it out of the surgery alive because of this was ‘very unlikely’. He told me it would be safer for me to go ahead and book the surgery at my local Gynaecology Ward Outpatient Department and that the wait would take no longer than 6 weeks.

He left the room and the next person to enter my room was my mom. The consultant hadn’t told the ward nurses that I hadn’t gone for surgery and I was left on the trolley in my room for over 12 hours with no antibiotics, no painkillers, no food and no water. My mom called the nurse in and we were greeted with “How did the surgery go? Lets check those wounds”. They had no idea I had been abandoned. The day nurses hadn’t been told I hadn’t gone for surgery and so by the time the night staff came around, I was back to square one.

This cycle repeated for over a week. New cannula, new antibiotic, new vein. New day, new nurses, new consultants, new opinions, new diagnoses. We finally agreed that if my WBC and Inflammation Markers began to drop at all, I would be allowed to switch to Oral Antibiotics, and be discharged to go home. With the promise that I would be placed on an urgent care pathway within the next few weeks. That I would be regularly monitored, scanned and checked-up on and that I would have the surgery within 6 weeks.

April 2024 - May 2025

Despite being reassured that I would have the tumour, ovary and fallopian tube removed within 6 weeks of being discharged, and despite being told that I would be regularly monitored in the meantime, it wasn’t until the end of April 2025 that I finally received a letter to attend a pre-operative assessment. It was during this appointment that I experienced my first ever true psychotic break. I didn’t know where I was or what I was doing. The last contact I had in regards to surgery was over a year ago. I had so many questions that the pre-op team just couldn’t give me the answers too and was told I probably wouldn’t get the opportunity to sit down with the consultant and ask about all of my concerns because it just isn’t ‘routine’ to do that. I was just expected to show up to a surgery that I had no idea what would be, for a tumour they hadn’t checked in over a year, overflowing with medical trauma and violent panic attacks and to be okay with it.

Nobody there could understand why I had been left for over a year with this tumour left in me with not even so much as a single scan or check-up to keep a track of it. Another nurse advised me to submit a complaint. This was the 4th or 5th health professional to approach us with this same advice. Thankfully the anaesthetist performing my assessment was human enough to see how neglected I had been by the NHS over the years and took matters into his own hands to arrange with my Gynae Consultant to have another ultrasound scan. I had the scan this morning. It was awful. And for another member of the NHS to come to us, off her own back, to urge us to raise a complaint is astoundingly frightening.

What Now?

My trust, faith and confidence in the NHS has been completely obliterated. I have been so emotionally, mentally and physically let down and neglected by this organisation that I have made myself so mentally unwell to the point I have had to move back home to my mums because I am so afraid of my own thoughts. Never have I come so close to taking steps to end my life. Something I have been ashamed of admitting publicly until now. I’m not ‘delusional’ or ‘overreacting’. I have had my life and future torn from beneath me because of the severe failings of a health board that is meant to save your life, not take it. My marriage has been torn back to its’ bare bones because my husband had to become my full-time carer. Any hopes of a family of our own ripped from our grasp because for the last 10 years.

I have been left feeling as though my only option is to now seek private treatment / surgery. We have been given quotes of up to £8,500 for the surgery. Something that is pretty much impossible to achieve on our own with only one source of full-time income and so little time to achieve this ourselves. I’m praying for a miracle that my story gains enough attention for people to rally behind not just me, but my whole family. Because this has been just as awful for them as it has been to live this. It’s an expensive surgery, but one that is my only chance of making out alive. I’m praying that we can raise enough to even just seek a more professional and safe second opinion. I would rather die fighting before I allow the NHS to lay another finger on me.

I am hoping that by sharing my story, I am able to raise enough awareness to put a stop to the severe failings of the NHS. Not just for me, but in memory of every single women before me who has lost their life because of the mistakes of the NHS, and for every young girl and woman who will follow behind in my footsteps. If I can only achieve one more thing with the number of days I have left, let it be that I set this entire organisation ablaze.

Share where you can. Donate IF you can. My silence will not be bought. For any amount of money.