Most of us take it for granted that we are here to celebrate Christmas with our loved ones. But for these people, for various reasons, this year is especially poignant. Here they share their inspiring stories…
Baby born years after my husband’s cancer
Eleanor Simpson, 28, a former zoo keeper, lives with husband Jacob, 28, who works in marketing, in Leeds. Their son Jonah, born in February, was conceived using Jacob’s sperm frozen 11 years ago. Eleanor says:
Jacob and I had only been going out for a couple of months when he started getting pains in his leg. We were in sixth form college and had both been asked to be prefects and then love blossomed.
As well as the pain, I noticed he had a small bump on his right thigh, and he was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma [cancer of the bone or soft tissue] that had spread to his lungs.
He was told that it would be fatal if it wasn’t treated immediately. It was such a shock, because he was so young and healthy.
Jacob said we needed to end the relationship, because he didn’t want me to have to go through this.
But there was no way I was leaving him now. We both took a year out of college so I could be with him every day through his treatment. He’d been told this would most likely destroy his fertility but there was such a strong connection between us I knew I’d stay with him even if it meant never having children.
Eleanor and Jacob Simpson with their son Jonah, who was born in February and was conceived using Jacob’s sperm frozen 11 years ago
Jacob needed to start chemotherapy treatment straight away but he insisted on having his sperm frozen first.
His parents urged him to prioritise his treatment, but he’d dreamed of being a dad since he was a kid, so he delayed it for two weeks.
After six months of chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery, his treatment finished in September 2014 – tests two months later showed Jacob wasn’t producing any sperm at all. It was devastating – as we had always clung on to a small hope that the treatment wouldn’t have totally destroyed his fertility.
So when I found myself staring at a positive pregnancy test after our first round of IVF [in May last year], I screamed – I could barely speak as I thrust the test at Jacob: we both looked at it and burst into tears. We hadn’t allowed ourselves to fully get our hopes up, for though we were told the length of the time the sperm had been frozen wouldn’t matter, there was only a 20 per cent chance of it working (as with any round of IVF) and that it was unlikely to happen first time.
They thawed out one of the frozen samples and fertilised my eggs and we managed to make three good quality embryos.
One was put into my womb, and the other two were frozen (as we hope to try again). It felt unreal to get pregnant that first try and we almost couldn’t bring ourselves to believe it was actually happening – until we had our second scan at 12 weeks.
I was so stunned the moment that Jonah was placed into my arms – Jacob’s reaction was just pure disbelief.
Jonah is the first grandson for both sets of our parents and we all feel incredibly lucky we have our miracle baby to be celebrating with us this Christmas.
Brought back to life by my postman
Ann Carter, 66, an English teacher at a secondary school, lives in Cheltenham – the divorced grandmother of four had a heart attack in March this year. Ann says:
I had just popped next door to my daughter Sarah’s house after walking a friend’s dogs – Sarah has a bath that I use to wash them. I’d just got them dry when I suddenly felt dizzy and hot; my heart was racing and I had a violent headache, and was being sick. I managed to phone my GP surgery and 111, and Sarah at work.
I don’t remember this but she said I gasped that the ambulance was on its way, before I lost consciousness. Sarah [who’s 40] arrived home ten minutes later and found me by the front door – making a terrible sound, like a death rattle from my lungs.
She couldn’t move me as I was too heavy, then my phone rang: it was 911 and Sarah told them she thought I was dead.
They told her to do CPR, which she’d never done before, so she went out onto the street and screamed for help. Luckily, our postman Shane heard her. I’ve known Shane for years and he always stops to say hello.
He came rushing over – he’d never done CPR either, but the 911 handler gave Sarah instructions, and she relayed these to him. Sarah later told me she’d felt it was hopeless, but they kept going. And the doctors said although I wasn’t breathing they’d been able to keep a very low pulse going which had stopped my organs dying and prevented brain damage.
Ann Carter suffered a cardiac arrest and was saved by her postman who had never performed CPR before but followed instructions from an emergency call handler
The paramedics arrived after 12 minutes, and then the Great Western Air Ambulance Charity crew, and they used a defibrillator on me several times. They managed to get my heart started again after it had been stopped for 50 minutes by then.
I was taken to Gloucester Royal Hospital: the doctors told my family I’d suffered a cardiac arrest caused by a massive blood clot blocking an artery in my heart and that Shane performing CPR had saved my life – I wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t been for him. Everyone was saying what a miracle it was that I was alive.
I had to have an operation to fit a stent in my blocked artery to open it up and made a good recovery, although the CPR had left me with several broken ribs.
I still see Shane – the first time it was almost awkward: what do you say to someone who has saved your life? I felt incredibly emotional. I gave him a huge box of chocolates, but told him I couldn’t say thank you enough.
I always feel so emotional and grateful when I see him – he’s not ‘just’ the postman any more, he’s someone who’s given me a second chance at life.
Survived tummy tuck that nearly killed me
Lucy Mawson, 32, a beautician, lives in Bradford, West Yorkshire, with her son, Chester, three. She had weight-loss surgery in Turkey that went badly wrong. Lucy says:
My mum desperately tried to stop me having a tummy tuck in Turkey – she showed me newspaper reports of women dying afterwards – but I refused to listen.
I’d seen a TikTok video about a woman who’d had a gastric sleeve [where they remove 85 per cent of your stomach].
It seemed like the answer: I’d struggled with my weight for years. I was 15st, dress size 16/18 and 5ft 5in [BMI, 32, officially ‘obese’]. I hated my body.
After Chester was born I decided to try surgery – it was going to be £3,000 in Turkey compared with £7,000-£11,000 here.
It wasn’t just a cosmetic thing, I have ulcerative colitis [inflammation in the large intestine], and I was having bad flare ups, causing abdominal pain and bloody diarrhoea. My specialist said gastric surgery can help as afterwards you can’t eat as much fatty foods, which aggravate it.
My grandparents agreed to lend me the money. At 6am the morning after I arrived in Turkey I was taken down for surgery.
My next memory is waking up and screaming in agony. There were about 15 patients around me, a lot of them screaming in pain, too – eventually a nurse gave me some morphine, but for the next three days in the hospital I was in agony.
I hobbled onto the plane bent over – then passed out on the flight at one point because I was in so much pain. My dad picked me up from the airport and took me to A&E the next morning: a scan showed blood was pooling in my pelvic area. The doctors said it was lucky I’d come in – any longer and I might not have lasted the night. Luckily after 24 hours, the bleeding stopped, but I had to stay in hospital for five nights.
Lucy Mawson woke up in agony after a tummy tuck in Turkey and rushed to hospital once she landed in the UK, where a scan showed that she might not have survived the night
But that was only the start of my problems. I was in so much pain when I ate I just couldn’t do it. I lost a stone in a week, and five stone in 12 months: that Christmas I could only manage two spoonfuls of soup.
The doctors gave me weight gain shakes but I really struggled, trying to work and be a mum to Chester – I couldn’t pick him up for months, worried I was going to tear inside.
I had an endoscopy last year, where doctors put a camera into my stomach and it showed they’d removed too much of my stomach, 90 per cent instead of 85 per cent. That’s why I’m in so much pain. Because I’m not getting the nutrients I need, I have up to 30 dizzy spells a day – in September, I went to check on Chester at 2am and fell and hit my head on a toy box. Luckily, I live with my parents who heard the thump and came running in.
My stomach has stretched a little bit over this year, and while I still can’t eat much solid food, this will be the first Christmas since my operation I can sit at the table and eat: a small side plate with one carrot, the tiniest bit of turkey, a couple of sprouts and a splash of gravy.
I now weigh 8st 10lb, a good weight for me, but at such a high cost, and I can honestly say I’d prefer to still be obese and had never had the surgery.
Saved by a 62-year-old stranger’s kidney
Amy Smith, 37, an NHS administrator, lives in Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset, with her husband Stuart, 41, a specialist plasterer. She spent six months in and out of hospital after her body rejected her kidney transplant in September last year. Amy says:
The relief was indescribable when doctors said I had a match for a new kidney. By February 2021, my kidney function was just 5 per cent and I was on a dialysis machine seven days a week.
Work was difficult as I had no energy, and I always had to be home and on the dialysis machine from 9pm for eight hours.
Amy Smith received a kidney transplant from a 62-year-old stranger who she has now become good friends with
My twin, Amanda, had a transplant a few years ago. We’d developed type 1 diabetes (Amanda at 11, and me at 13) and then kidney failure – she got a new kidney from our dad (Steven, 64).
My husband was set to donate his kidney as part of a ‘pool’. Each person who needs a transplant has a potential donor who isn’t a match for them, but if they’re a match for someone else in the pool, then you’ll be found a match, too. But at the last minute Stuart was no longer a good enough match.
I was facing life on dialysis, or dying – but then my mum (Alison, 62, a nurse) was a match for another recipient. Two weeks later, I had the transplant – and within 24 hours my kidney function went up to 72 per cent.
But blood tests showed my body kept trying to reject my new kidney. I was in and out of hospital for six months, battling to find the right anti-rejection drugs.
If a kidney transplant fails, the only option is another transplant. I tried not to think about dying, because I knew keeping positive would help with my recovery.
Then, last Christmas, I caught pneumonia and spent January in hospital. I got a letter from my donor but was too ill to write back.
Finally, by April, I turned a corner and my donor and I started emailing. Stephen, a former postman (now 62) decided to donate a kidney after his granddaughter, Georgia aged eight, who’d been born with an extra kidney, had to have it removed. Stephen wanted to help a stranger in case Georgia needs a transplant one day. We’ve all met and have a lovely family friendship.
My health is amazing – Stuart and I have been able to go on holiday for the first time in five years.
Thanks to Dad, Mum and Stephen, this is the first Christmas Amanda and I have been able to celebrate together for over 20 years, as one of us has always been sick.
Our twins were lasered apart in my womb
Zoe Hyland-Freshney, 21, a transport planner, and Jordan Hyde, 23, a roofer, live in Nottingham with their identical twins Arabella and Dakota, now three months. The twins needed life-saving surgery in the womb at 17 weeks. Zoe says:
We’d been told that laser surgery was our girls’ only hope of survival – but, even then, the chances of both surviving was 50 per cent, and the chance of one surviving was 85 per cent.
Immediately after the procedure, we could see one little hand and a foot waving around on the surgeon’s screen but we didn’t know if it was the last time that we would see one or both of them.
Jordan and I had been so excited when we discovered I was expecting twins. We hadn’t even been trying for a baby.
Zoe Hyland-Freshney and Jordan Hyde with Arabella and Dakota, who developed twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome in the womb and needed laser surgery to be separated
At 16 weeks, a scan showed they’d developed twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome (TTTS), where identical twins share a placenta, with one baby getting too much blood and nutrients, while the other one doesn’t get enough. It’s life-threatening to both.
A laser is used (via keyhole surgery) to separate and seal off the abnormal blood vessels connecting the babies. I had this done the next day. It was terrifying and all happening so quickly. I was awake and cried throughout the surgery.
After the two-hour operation, I had a scan to check they were alive. When the consultant said they were, I burst into tears.
We named them straight away: it was horrible hearing them just being called Twin One and Twin Two.
All went fine until 31 weeks when my blood pressure began to rise. Then my waters broke and it looked like Arabella’s umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck, so they had to be delivered straight away. I was hysterical but the staff were amazing.
I woke up from the anaesthetic and was told both girls had been born safely, but I wasn’t out of danger as my blood pressure was so high – they thought I could have a fit at any time.
I met the girls seven hours later and just burst into tears. I was petrified because they were so tiny – just 3Ib. After five days I was discharged, and they came home after 26 days. We feel so lucky to have them with us this Christmas. They’ve beaten the odds to survive.