A young woman has lost the ability to walk, talk and even eat independently after suffering a massive brain haemorrhage while on a trip away with her boyfriend. Molly Lloyd, 22, needed three emergency operations to stem the bleeding on her brain and has been in hospital recovering since May.
Following a sudden seizure at the age of 19, Molly was diagnosed with a brain arteriovenous malformation (AVM), a tangle of abnormal and poorly-developed blood vessels, which increased her likelihood of a severe brain bleed in the future. While doctors tried several different treatments to address the problem, they ultimately proved unsuccessful.
Molly's mum, Jenny Lloyd, said the past four months have been a living nightmare, and it remains to be seen whether her daughter will be able to make any sort of recovery. "Her brain will need to rewire itself - she'll have to learn everything again like a baby," said Jenny.
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"Each person with a brain injury is an individual so it's hard to know how they will recover. Someone could come [into hospital] the same as Molly and be walking and talking within six months. I have to hold out hope that she will get better."
Molly was given medication and put under a consultant at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham following the AVM diagnosis in August 2019. It was discovered that she had a 4cm x 4cm AVM in the frontal lobe of her brain which controls cognitive skills like planning, self-control, memory formation, empathy and attention.
"As she was so young, the likelihood of her having a brain bleed was high," Jenny explained. "It was massively concerning."
In 2021, doctors discovered that Molly's AVM had grown and was now too big to operate on without it causing major damage to her brain. "Where it was located would affect her movement and speech, so they didn't want to go in and cause any trouble," Jenny added. "So instead she went to Sheffield for something called gamma knife radiosurgery where they put a frame around her head and gave her tiny beams of radiation. She had to do all that on her own due to Covid. She was incredibly brave."
While Molly, who lived in Splott, Cardiff, was able to go to university and lead a relatively normal life, that all changed in May 14 this year. "She'd handed in all her uni work just before she had the haemorrhage," Jenny recalled. "She had gone away with her boyfriend for the night, and then she was going to drive and visit me afterwards. I had a phone call from her boyfriend to say that she'd had a seizure while she was driving. He managed to take control of the car and take her off the road."
Thankfully Molly came round and she was taken to a hospital in nearby Hereford. Jenny added: "We thought she would be alright and wouldn't even need to stay overnight. She was talking and everything. As she had the AVM they took her for a CT scan, and when she came back she complained of having the worst headache ever - and then she collapsed."
Doctors in Hereford discovered Molly had suffered had two bleeds on her brain and that her AVM had grown to 6cm x 6cm. She was 'blue-lighted' to Queen Elizabeth Hospital where she underwent an emergency craniectomy.
A few days later she had a third bleed, prompting doctors to carry out an an embolization by cerebral angiography to stop any further bleeds. "That was the week from hell," said Jenny, who stayed in Birmingham during her daughter's horrific ordeal.
Following three months in Birmingham, Molly was transferred to University Hospital Llandough where she continues to make slow progress. "She can't speak and she can barely move, but she can open her eyes and she can definitely understand you," added Jenny, who makes frequent trips from her home near Hay-on-Wye to Llandough to see Molly. "They weren't able to take all of the AVM out during surgery, so the threat of another haemorrhage is still there.
"She is making small signs of progress. At one point she couldn't open her right eye at all but she can open that now. She can use yes/no communication cards to answer questions so we feel her understanding is getting better."
She concluded: "We as a family would like to say a big 'thank you' to the surgeons, consultants, specialist doctors, nurses and all the staff at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham for saving Molly's life and caring for her. We'd also like to thank staff at Llandough for their further rehabilitation care."
Molly's family and friends have set up a GoFundMe page to raise funds for her extensive rehabilitation when she finally leaves hospital. To donate please go here. Her friends are also planning to run the Cardiff Half Marathon in October.
Organiser of the page, Jemma Howells, said: "We as a family have been so proud of Molly and are inspired by her bravery and fighting all the way with everything that has been thrown at her. She is still as beautiful as she ever was.
"It will be a long recovery for Molly, but with a lot of hard work and determination, Molly will achieve this, we know she will. We tell her every day how much people are asking about her and she is sent so much love."
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