Kerri-Ann Wool made several trips to A&E and GPs, but was left to her own devices to discover she’d had a stroke.
The young mother, 34, from Portsmouth was persistently turned away by hospital doctors and GP’s who had all missed signs she’d suffered from a stroke.
Instead, she was diagnosed with tension headaches, migraines and postnatal depression, as she’d suffered constantly from distorted vision, a severe headache and dizziness.
One GP prescribed her with antidepressants before telling Kerri-Ann to “go to get her nails done to cheer herself up.” As reported by The Mirror.
After going through an MRI scan and results revealing the stroke in her cerebellum, the consultant that read the results to her, missed this information.
After being left unsatisfied by the results of the scan, the mum-of-three requested her medical records one year after.
She was shocked to discover that the diagnosis had indeed been written down in her MRI results, however, none of the doctors that treated her had noticed it.
Due to the misfortune of her missed diagnosis, it is now too late for Kerri-Ann to receive treatment for the stroke, meaning she continues to suffer from lasting symptoms, including: constant dizziness, nausea and severe headaches.
These lasting symptoms are also preventing the young mother from working.
The 34-year-old has said “I felt like I was being fobbed off as a hysterical woman, I couldn’t get anyone to take me seriously.”
Mrs Wool was out walking with her youngest child in September 2018, when she suffered from a stroke. She describes a sudden sensation of distorted vision and an intense headache at the base of her skull.
After this, she made an emergency appointment with her GP, who later suggested it could have been a blood pressure issue before sending her home.
The symptoms, however, worsened.
She then made frequent visits to her local practice over the next three days, seeing a different GP each day.
During her final visit Kerri-Ann burst in to tears through frustration, but was misinformed by a male GP that she was potentially suffering from postnatal depression.
The same GP later encouraged her to get a manicure, as a way of lifting her mood.
She described what she was experiencing at this point:
“I was struggling to get out of bed. I didn’t know which was up or down as I was so dizzy. My head was in so much pain and my whole body just didn’t feel like it was mine.”
On September 23, 2018, she attended A&E at the Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth, however, she was given paracetamol for a headache and was sent home.
Kerri-Ann would go on to make two more visits to the same hospital in the next three days, and it was on the second visit when she was given a CT scan, though the results from the scan came back as clear.
After the scan, she was seen to by a consultant, but was told she was suffering from migraines.
The young mother would finally go through an MRI scan, after she made a visit to Southampton General Hospital’s A&E department on September 29, 2018.
The scan would reveal that she had experienced a stroke, however, the consultant at University Hospitals Southampton NHS Trust that was responsible for reading the scan, missed the diagnosis.
The focus, instead, was on another part of the report, that had revealed that Mrs Wool had a genetic condition affecting her brain structure.
After this, she would go on to have continuing symptoms of headaches, dizziness and nausea for the next year, despite receiving multiple forms of treatment for migraines.
She would finally come to her wits end in September 2019 and requested her full medical records.
Upon reading through the results of her MRI scan, she was left astounded as she found a diagnosis of “infarct” on the report.
Not being a medical professional, Kerri-Ann would go on to do Google searches of the term.
“I Googled it because I didn’t know what it meant and it kept coming up as ‘stroke’”
“I didn’t understand at first. I thought I couldn’t possibly have a stroke, because surely someone would have told me.”
The young mum called the hospital seeking advice and was later contacted by a consultant who apologised for missing the diagnosis.
The same doctor also wrote a letter to Mrs Wool, declaring that the diagnosis of the stroke had “somehow passed me by and I’m sorry for this.”
The doctors did declare, however, that the stroke couldn’t be blamed for her ongoing symptoms and that there was potentially another issue.
After several further tests, Kerri-Ann was diagnosed with a hole in her heart, which could have been the cause for her stroke as it had potential to let a blood clot travel into her blood stream and up to her brain.
In July 2021, she would have surgery to close the hole, reducing her future risk of strokes or heart failure.
Despite this, her symptoms remain so harsh that she has been unable to return to work and she is now a blue badge holder.
Kerri- Ann has said she wants “young people with stroke symptoms to be taken seriously, so they can get the treatment they need in time.”
The 34-year-old now receives support from the charity Different Strokes, which supports stroke suffers under the age of 65.
The charity’s chief executive, Austin Willett said: “Kerri-Ann says she was told again and again that she was ‘too young to have had a stroke’.
“This is something we hear too often from the community of young stroke survivors we work with.
“Stories like hers shows us how much work we will still have to do to challenge a lack of awareness and misconceptions about strokes in younger people.”
A trustee of the charity, Dr Satinder Sanghera, GP, suffered a severe stroke at only 20-years-old. She stated: “Time is of crucial importance in treating stroke. Whether the stroke is due to a bleed or a blockage, investigating which of these it is as soon as possible reduces the risk of death, in the worst case, or disability.”
At this time Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust and University Hospitals Southampton NHS Trust have both declared they were unable to comment on the case.
