Mez Olivia

A British woman who collapsed suddenly at work saw her life come to a shuddering halt. 😢

Mez Olivia had eaten breakfast as normal on the morning she lost consciousness in front of her colleagues in Dubai. 

Doctors discovered the 26-year-old had suffered a brain haemorrhage caused by an abnormal tangle of blood vessels. 😲

Her family were told it was life or death, but Covid restrictions meant her sister was unable to fly out to give written consent for the emergency surgery after testing positive.

"If I didn't have the operation, I would die, but I needed written consent to go through with it," Mez says. 💔

Medics performed an embolization procedure, guiding instruments through an artery in her groin to seal off the abnormal blood vessels responsible for the bleed. 

Large portions of her hospital stay remain a complete blur.

After being flown back to Wales, Mez was placed on a stroke ward alongside elderly patients at Glangwili Hospital in Carmarthen.

"They gave me a side room, but sometimes I'd have to come out because someone had died," she says. 💔

Doctors warned her she might never walk independently again and advised her to use a wheelchair.

But she refused to accept the prognosis and committed to intensive rehabilitation until she was walking without a stick 19 months later.

Because the arteriovenous malformation is positioned deep within her brain, surgeons were unable to extract it.

Instead, she received radiotherapy in April 2023, a treatment that can take years to prove fully effective. 

Yet the treatment has introduced fresh complications.

She has since lost vision on her right side and has suffered brain swelling, necessitating steroid treatment. 😢

She said: "The scariest thing is that something that's supposed to make you better can also take things away from you."

Mez is now three years into her five-year course of radiotherapy.

We're thinking of you Mez. 🙏🏼