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**_My generous boy gave so much, who else could he save? By Tania Ranby, 46_**

As I sat on the hospital bed, the sonographer rubbed the wand over my tummy.

‘Twins,’ I uttered in disbelief, looking at the screen.

There you were, Liam, wiggling around inside my stomach next to your brother Luke.

I’d always wanted boys so I’d been excited, but sadly, as doctors examined more, there was news.

Doctors couldn’t work out exactly what was happening, but I felt some peace knowing that you were in there looking after him.

At the next scan, a surprised doctor said: ‘They’re both growing.’

Even before you were born, you’d wanted to help in any way you could — you were pumping blood from your heart into Luke’s body.

At seven months, you’d decided it was time we met and my waters broke.

I had a Caesarean and you entered the world with a small, sweet cry.

Doctors discovered you and Luke had twin arterial perfusion sequence, meaning you shared arteries and your brother was born with no heart as well as other missing organs and limbs.

As soon as the cord was cut, the blood supply you’d been giving him was gone.

You were rushed into intensive care and I prayed that you’d be OK.

Thankfully, a month later, you were allowed home.

It was only then that we held a funeral for Luke because I wanted you there to say goodbye.

The night before the funeral, I lay in bed, your bassinet one side of me and Luke’s coffin on the other.

‘You’ve taken such good care of your brother,’ I whispered.

It was the only night the three of us spent together.

After the funeral, the grief was overwhelming.

Some days, I couldn’t even face the day. I turned to alcohol to cope.

I’d watch you babbling away, sometimes staring into the distance.

I had this feeling Luke was with us and it was him you were talking to.

‘I love you, my boy, I’m going to get better,’ I promised you.

A few years later, I had your sister Arnika who joined our tribe.

Compared to your sensitive and calm nature, she was a firecracker, always up to mischief.

You played so gently with her, showing her your trains and even letting her have cuddles with your favourite toy — a pink doll called Buddy.

Your love for Arnika was fierce, you were her little protector.

Me and Dad split up but we were both still there for you.

As you got older, you got stuck into different hobbies — skateboarding, football and even motorcross racing.

By 11, you’d discovered the electric guitar.

‘Listen to this one, Mum,’ you said, sitting on the edge of my bed at 7am.

‘That’s great, can I listen later,’ I’d say because I wasn’t as much of a morning person as you.

You grew out your hair and years later, you fell in love. It wasn’t meant to be and you took the break-up hard.

It pained me to watch but one day you told me: ‘I’m going to be OK, Mum.’

You picked yourself up, joined a band and started going to the gym.

‘Look at those muscles,’ I teased you.

Your smile was back and I breathed a sigh of relief.

The country was entering lockdown and it was all so confusing.

‘Are you scared of dying of Covid, Mum?’ you asked.

‘I’m not scared of dying either,’ you replied. ‘Love you.’

‘Love you too,’ I said, as you hung up.

There was an unknown number followed by a serious voice: ‘Is that Liam’s mum?’

The stranger explained you’d collapsed at the gym and been found unresponsive.

Now, you were in hospital on life support.

An animalistic noise escaped my throat. My body shook and it didn’t stop as my sister drove me to you.

I had to take a Covid test before I could see you.

My stomach churned as I waited two hours for the results. I kept looking up at the hospital windows.

Thankfully, Arnika and your dad were with you already.

It was negative and when I was finally inside, a doctor pulled me into a side room.

‘You must prepare for the worst,’ he said.

I sat on a hard plastic chair, as he explained you had undiagnosed arteriovenous malformation. The blood vessels in your brain had never formed properly and you’d had a huge bleed.

The next day was crucial as doctors planned to perform tests to determine if you were brain-dead.

You were my brave boy. You’d worked so hard to make yourself happy, you deserved a long and healthy life.

But the following day, at 12.08pm, doctors pronounced you brain-dead. I held your hand and cried.

Later, a doctor approached us and asked: ‘Do you know if Liam wanted to be an organ donor?’

I thought of Luke, how you’d helped him and I knew your heart had the power to pump for others.

For the next few nights, I slept by your side, until it was time for your organs to be harvested.

We took the walk of honour and said goodbye. I stroked your long hair and kissed your cheek.

It was the last time I felt your heart beating in your chest, your body warm to the touch.

After the pain of losing your brother, I wasn’t sure if I could survive losing you too.

But following a small funeral, we went through your things and found a notepad.

We’d often seen you scribbling away in it, especially after the break-up.

Inside was a list, it read: _What I must do for my happiness. Write music, trust the process of life, keep my heart in the light, play guitar, go to the gym, be grateful._

I let your words be my guide and took your recipe on how to be happy.

Doing what you did, it felt like you were with me.

As Covid restrictions eased, we were able to hold a proper funeral for you and reunite you with Luke.

And in time, news of the wonderful things your organs had done arrived.

Your liver had saved the life of a three-year-old girl. Two more people had regained their sight from your eyes. Another person has your heart.

In total, you’ve saved five lives and helped six more.

I’m so proud of you and everything you achieved in your short life.

And I’m even more proud of the legacy you’ve left behind. Other families don’t have to grieve as we have, because of your desire to help.

We miss you every day. But I like the thought that part of you is still alive in the world. Your eyes are seeing all the things you didn’t get to and your heart will love again.

_**• To find out more about AVM, visit ninds.nih.gov and search ‘AVM’**_

My son died but saved five lives

**_As Lisa's train approached the platform, she suddenly slipped..._**

Getting my book out of my handbag, I sank back into my seat.

I’m on the train, see you soon, I texted my brother Joe.  
One of eight siblings, we were a close family, and I visited Joe twice a month.  
It was a great chance to catch up and see my one-year-old niece.  
When I finally got there, I could smell steak cooking.  
‘It’s making me hungry!’ I called to Joe.  
We all sat around the table and tucked into our delicious dinner.  
Then, I had a quick cuddle with my niece before her 7pm bedtime.    
To make sure I didn’t get home late, I headed off not long after.  
After saying my goodbyes,  I opened the door to find rain hammering down.  
‘Oh great,’ I mumbled, as I walked quickly to the station.  
When I got to the platform, the train was arriving.  
Thank goodness I made it! I thought.  
I headed to the far end, thinking I’d be able to hop on one of the front carriages.  
But suddenly, I slipped into the gap between the train and the platform.  
A split second later, I felt a thwack.

The train had hit me!  
Somehow I was being spun around, and I felt a hard tug on my left leg as the wheels of the train made contact.  
Then, I felt a tear.  
I hope that’s only my foot, I thought.  
When the train came to a stop, I was wedged between it and the platform.  
Then, I looked down in horror.  
Most of my left leg had been ripped off and was nowhere to be seen.  
There was blood everywhere and the pain quickly set in.  
It was excruciating.  
But no one could see or  hear me.  
I flattened myself against the side of the platform.  
I hoped it would be enough to prevent the train running me over as it left.  
My heart was beating out of my chest as it picked up speed and finally disappeared.  
‘Help!’ I screamed.

I have to get out of here before another train comes, I panicked.  
Trying to stand on my right foot, I winced in pain.  
I realised it was probably sprained.  
My only chance was to muster all the upper-body strength I had and reach up to the platform.  
At only 5ft, my fingers just about reached.  
After a few attempts, I got myself up and over.  
As I hauled myself on to the platform, there were people milling about.  
‘Somebody help!’ I screamed as loud as I could.  
But shockingly, everyone ignored me.  
I tried to take off my shirt, thinking I could wrap it tightly around my open wound to stem the blood flow.  
But I just didn’t have the strength.  
Instead, I used both hands to squeeze it as hard as I could.  
Eventually, a ticket collector heard my yells and came running over.  
‘Please can you get an ambulance,’ I said.  
He ran off for help and came back with a police officer who, thankfully, had been in the  car park.  
‘Here, I’ve got  a tourniquet,’  he said, wrapping  it around my leg.  
The pain was unlike anything I’d ever felt before.  
While we waited for some back-up, every minute felt like  an hour.  
I clenched my teeth, crying through the agony.  
Eventually, more officers arrived.

‘Shouldn’t I be in shock or have blacked out?’ I asked. ‘Why can I feel all the pain?’  
‘Normally you would be,’ one of them replied.  
Then, the ambulance came and I was carefully placed on a stretcher  and given an IV drip for the pain.

‘I’ve got to think of the positives — at least I’ll get half-price pedicures from now on,’ I joked with the paramedics.  
I’d always had an upbeat outlook on life.  
Five minutes later, we got to the trauma unit and I was rushed in for emergency surgery.  
An hour later, I woke from the anaesthetic.  
‘We cleaned all the dirt and gravel from the wound,’ a doctor said.

Still drowsy from the medications, I dozed on and off.  
The next time I woke up, five of my family were around my bed in tears.  
‘I’m OK,’ I told them as they hugged me.  
Later, the doctor warned me that they might not be able to save my left knee.  
‘I’m afraid you’ll need an above-the-knee amputation,’ he told me the next day.  
Because I’d expected it, I took the news calmly.  
A few days later, I had the operation, and when I came around and saw most of my leg was missing, I felt strangely OK.  
I’m just so lucky to be alive,  I thought.

‘I want to try to walk,’ I told  the nurse.  
There was no time like the present.  
I hauled myself out of bed  and the nurse handed me some crutches.  
As I took one step, and then another, the pain in my leg was manageable.  
Knowing that my mum was coming to visit, I made my way down the corridor.  
When she saw me walking towards her, she burst into tears.  
‘You’re so amazing! Nothing  is going to keep you down,’  she said.  
‘You’ve got that right,’ I smiled.  
Determined to get better quickly, I made sure to get up on my crutches a few times a day.  
Other times, I used a wheelchair.  
The hardest part was getting my bandages changed. Every time, the pain was terrible.  
I quickly learnt how to get around on my own and do normal daily tasks without help.  
With my 30th birthday fast approaching, my family began organising a party.  
We came up with a glam-putation theme.  
I was happy to embrace my stump, because it was a reminder that I’d survived.  
So, I asked for stump-shaped foods like carrot sticks.  
As I had a room to myself, we were allowed to play music and put decorations up.  
The hospital staff joined us and we all had a blast. I felt so lucky to have so much support.  
After two weeks, I was moved to a physical rehabilitation centre, where staff were shocked at how much I could already do on my own.  
‘I’m not planning on changing the way I live, so I need to learn how to do everything,’ I told them.

My positive attitude drove me.  
Staff took me out on to the streets for training.  
They taught me how to get  up and down from kerbs, and what to do if I fell.  
Then, I learnt how to get on and off trains by myself too.  
There was no way I was going to let  the incident stop me from using one again.  
After 10 days, I was allowed home.  
A shower bench was installed in my bathroom and railings put around my bed.  
I also had a rest to perch my stump on when I was standing.  
I looked into getting a prosthetic, and now it’s in the process of being made for me.  
It’s only been four months, but I’m already back in the gym and swimming again like I used to before the accident.  
I rarely use my wheelchair  and walk a mile every day to keep active.  
Granted, it’s much harder with crutches, but using them is such a good workout, I’m in the best shape of my life!  
It’s so surreal looking back to the day I was hit by a train.  
Very few people survive that, so I’m just incredibly grateful.  
I may have lost a limb, but I haven’t lost my determination to live the best life possible.

PLATFORM PERIL: My LEG was STOLEN as I waited for a train

**_My self esteem was at an all-time low, but slapdash surgery left me leaking! By Georgina Goldsmith, 46_**

Tugging my clothes as I stared at the mirror, I sighed miserably.

After having four kids, all by C-section, my stomach hadn’t been the same in years.  
Plus, as a full-time nurse, I was always eating on the go and rarely had time to exercise.  
‘Are you ready, love?’ my husband said, coming up the stairs.  
We were meant to be heading to dinner, but recently I’d been avoiding going out.  
At 13st 12lb, and a size 16 to 18, my self-esteem was at an all-time low. I dressed in oversized jumpers and jeans, even in summer, in an attempt to make my body invisible.  
Then, one day at work, my colleague returned from a few weeks’ annual leave.  
‘You look amazing!’ I said, admiring her trim figure under her nurse scrubs.  
‘I’ll let you in on a secret…’ she smiled.  
She explained she’d just come back from Turkey, where she’d had a tummy tuck.  
‘Oh, I don’t think I could ever go for surgery abroad,’ I said.  
I’d heard far too many horror stories…  
But I had to admit her transformation was amazing, and when she told me how cheap it had been, I found myself thinking about it more.

  
I’d always wondered if surgery might be the answer for me, and I’d even looked into a tummy tuck in the UK after my daughter was born 11 years ago.  
But the cost had been a staggering £15k — I simply couldn’t afford it.  
Maybe I should look into Turkey, I thought.  
For the next five years, I did extensive research on the procedure and the surgeon my colleague had used.  
I spent hours on patient forums and the surgeon’s website, reading reviews and marvelling at the before and after photos.  
‘I think I want to get a tummy tuck in Turkey,’ I said to my hubby eventually.  
He was incredibly supportive, just wanting me to be happy.  
A few weeks later, I paid the £1,000 deposit and booked the flights.  
Since my husband was staying at home to look after the kids, my friend, Jo, came with me.  
I was booked in for a tummy tuck with muscle repair, liposuction and a breast lift.  
‘Aren’t you scared about going for major surgery abroad?’ a friend asked.  
I was nervous, but after so many years of research,  I felt prepared and excited.  
Landing in Turkey, Jo and I were taken to a plush hotel near the hospital.  
A few days later, the big day arrived.  
The minute I met the surgeon, any nerves I had vanished.  
He was so calm and friendly.  
‘We’ll remove this bit of stomach here and cut along here,’ he said, his pen tracing lines over my body.  
‘Have you thought about chin liposuction?’ he asked a few moments later, while examining my neck.

> ‘I’ll let you  > in on a  > secret’

I’d always been self-conscious about my double chin, so I quickly agreed to extra surgery, adding another £750 to my bill.  
The total cost was £10,500.  
I’d saved up for the deposit, but I’d taken out a loan to cover the rest.  
It was daunting to hand over such a huge amount.  
But after my money was collected, the atmosphere in the room changed.  
They rushed me through signing the consent forms without allowing me time to read them and then a nurse appeared to give me medication for the surgery.  
I watched wide-eyed in shock as she approached me without wearing gloves.  
Then I was wheeled into the hospital corridor as my eyelids drifted shut…  
The next thing I knew, I woke up in the hospital room, throbbing in agony.  
I was wrapped in a compression garment, and there were three drains attached to me so excess fluid could be removed.  
Only, my whole body was soaked with blood and fluid.  
And, gently moving my head,  I felt a tight chin strap digging into my neck.  
I’d been in theatre for nine hours.  
‘How are you feeling?’ Jo asked.  
‘I don’t think I should be this wet,’ I said, gritting my teeth as another wave of pain hit me.  
Hours later, nurses encouraged me to stand up.  
But as I did, fluid from my body puddled around my socks.  
‘I need new sheets,’ I cried, terrified.  
Rather than fresh sheets, the hospital staff placed a new absorbent pad over my bed.  
‘I’m going to get an infection or a pressure sore,’ I whispered to Jo, panic sweeping through me.  
After spending two horrific days in the hospital, where staff smoked on the ward and only  a few of them spoke English, I was discharged.

‘Get me out of here,’ I said to Jo.  
But when we arrived back at the hotel, we realised that, despite my dressings needing to be changed twice a day, the hospital hadn’t given me any.  
Nurses came once a day to check on me  and provide pain relief — the paracetamol dose only half of what someone in the UK would take for a headache.  
I was shocked to see the nursing staff didn’t wear scrubs or aprons over their own clothes.  
‘Don’t touch me without gloves on!’ I snapped at one man.  
As the days went on, my body began to swell, and the compression garment and chin strap dug in even more.  
But five days after surgery, I was told I was fit to fly.  
Sitting on the plane, I felt my body balloon — even the parts of me that hadn’t had surgery, such as my arms and legs.  
‘Are you OK?’ Jo asked as I winced, the pain was like being stung repeatedly.  
When I got home, the swelling remained.  
Worried, I contacted the surgeon’s PA but I was told this was normal and I was advised to eat a low-carb diet.

> ‘Don’t touch me without gloves on!’

Then I remembered reading how some women on the patient forums had found that lymphatic drainage massages helped.  
I booked myself in for one, but nothing seemed to reduce the swelling.  
I found myself spending £125 on three massages a week, without seeing very much improvement.  
Then, weeks later, I noticed a small, white thread emerging from the scar across my stomach.  
It was one of my dissolvable stitches.  
‘Just pull them out,’ the surgeon’s secretary told me.  
But each stitch that came  to the surface made my once-neat scar more angry.  
Over the next few months, 22 stitches came to the surface and I was put on antibiotics for a wound infection.  
To make matters worse, something had gone wrong with my chin lipo.  
Small pockets of fat had been missed and the too-tight chin strap had pressed them on to my neck, making it look wrinkled.  
‘That’s normal,’ the surgeon’s PA insisted.  
But I knew it wasn’t — I could barely stand to look at myself.  
Going back to work, people commented on my weight loss.  
I tried to be happy with my slimmer figure, even buying new clothes.  
But deep down, I still hated my body.  
It was littered with scars and the skin around my stomach was so tight, I often struggled to reach the kitchen cupboard. Picking up my toddler son was almost impossible, too.  
I can’t be the only one experiencing this, I thought.  
Logging on to my laptop, I shared my experiences on the same online forums I’d used for research months before.  
Soon, my post was flooded with comments from women who’d had similar experiences but had been too scared to speak out.  
Now, I’m still in recovery.  
I have to continue wearing my compression garment daily, and  I have lymphatic massages every fortnight.  
Thankfully, the surgeon has recently refunded me for my botched chin surgery.  
For anyone who’s thinking about getting surgery abroad, please think twice.  
It may be cheaper but it could cost you dearly in terms of your health and wellbeing.

Tummy Tuck Horror: My quest for a dream body turned to a nightmare

**Issue 01 2025**: Page 15 Picture Pointer = Fantasy

**Issue 02 2025**: Page 15 Picture Pointer = Appendix

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