A young woman has lost the ability to walk, talk and even eat independently after being rushed to hospital while on holiday with her boyfriend.
Molly Lloyd needed three emergency operations to stem the bleeding on her brain when she suffered a massive brain haemorrhage. The 22-year-old 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.
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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. Jenny said: "Her brain will need to rewire itself - she'll have to learn everything again like a baby.
"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 following the AVM diagnosis in August 2019. It was discovered 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, Wales Online reports.
Jenny continued: "As she was so young, the likelihood of her having a brain bleed was high. It was massively concerning."
In 2021, doctors discovered Molly's AVM had grown and was now too big to operate on without causing major damage to her brain. Jenny said: "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, from Cardiff, was able to go to university and lead a relatively normal life, that all changed in May 14 this year. Jenny added: "She'd handed in all her uni work just before she had the haemorrhage. She had gone away with her boyfriend, 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."
Hospital doctors discovered Molly had suffered had two bleeds on her brain and that her AVM had grown to 6cm x 6cm. Molly underwent an emergency craniectomy, but a few days later she suffered a third bleed.
Doctors then had to carry out further emergency surgeries. Jenny said it was the "week from hell". Some months after the event, Molly is making some slow progress.
Jenny explained: "She can't speak and she can barely move, but she can open her eyes and she can definitely understand you. 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 added: "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. You can find the link here. Her friends are also planning to run the Cardiff Half Marathon in October.
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