Boy lives in England.
Girl lives in England.
Boy meets Girl.
Boy and Girl fall in love.
Girl has hormone problems, epilepsy, OMFG brain tumor
English doctors refuse to operate.
Girl flies to America, has successful operation and marries sweetheart.
From the London Daily Mail:
At 19, Meg was told her brain tumour was inoperable. Nonsense, said her mother, I won't let my daughter die
For a bridegroom to feel blessed on his wedding day is not unexpected. But as Josh Hill rose to toast his new bride's family and friends, he found himself choked with emotion.
Not surprising. It is almost impossible to put into words how much he and his bride Meg owe not just to her family but to one man in particular: an American-based surgeon.
Cheering on the happy couple that day in May this year, everyone was acutely aware of Josh's feelings. Quite simply Meg owes her life to the tenacity of her mother and the skill of her surgeon. Without them she would almost certainly be dead by now.
The timeline:
Her vision blurred intermittently and she had bouts of early morning nausea. Her mother Helen, 47, an education adviser, who separated from Meg's father David when Meg was 12, initially put it down to teenage hormones.
Even when Meg crashed her car, while driving home alone one evening in November 2003, no one guessed the real reason.
The article mentioned that her sysmptems had been going on for five years so it started when she was 14.
However, in July 2004, a week before her 19th birthday, Meg collapsed while working on her Saturday job. 'The next thing I knew, I was in A&E at Winchester's Royal Hampshire County Hospital.'
No treatment until she was 19 years old.
As Meg's mother, stepfather and elder brother sped to her bedside, Meg was given blood tests. They proved inconclusive, so an MRI scan was arranged at Southampton General Hospital for the following month.
Meanwhile, suspecting the seizures were caused by epilepsy, Meg was prescribed twice-daily medication.
Over the next few months, Meg carried on as normal. She started preparing for her history of art degree course at Warwick University, and although she suffered a few small fits, put this down to problems with her medication.
But in October came the bombshell. Meg returned to hospital for the results of her scan to be told she had a malignant brain tumour.
Once in the hospital, she was scheduled for an MRI but the scan was not done for another month (August). The diagnosis was not done for another two months.
Brain tumours are graded from one to four. Meg's tumour was a grade two - although grade one and some grade two tumours can be cured by surgery, with many other grade two and higher-grade tumours it is not a case of curing, but prolonging life, says Paul Grundy, consultant neurosurgeon at Southampton General Hospital.
Could have caught it earlier.
Watching Meg suffer was too much for her mother. Helen decided to find out as much as she could about brain tumours on the internet.
When she read about Professor Black and his work at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, it offered the first ray of hope.
They flew out to Boston, met with the Doctor, went back home to do some fund-raising, saw another surgeon in London:
'Opting for surgery in America was expensive - £50,000,' says Meg. 'I needed to be sure no British surgeon could offer me the same hope.'
Unlike in Southampton, the London consultant recommended surgery. But he admitted that Meg stood a far better chance in the U.S. as the equipment was so superior.
Flew back to Boston, eight hours on the table and she was successfully cured.
The reason I am posting stories like this is that England's National Health Care simply does not work for anything more complex than an aspirin. Medicines are deemed too expensive for elderly people (who are just going to die sometime anyway), the amount of major equipment per capita is a lot lower so the wait times are a lot higher.
When I had my hip problems, I saw my family doctor. He offered either an X-Ray or an MRI and he said that the MRI would be better. I opted at that time for the MRI and went in for the scan three days later. I got my diagnosis a few days after that and had my first visit with the Orthopedic Surgeon 20 days later.
Do we really want to give that all up? Other nations send their critical care patients here because our system is so much better. Do we really want to give that all up?
