A mother who began vomiting after drinking tea and eating breakfast cereal has learned her stomach is completely broken. Emilie Cullum now weighs just over four stone and was forced to cut her wedding short last week. She says she is starving to death. After being diagnosed with Gastroparesis, a long-term condition where food passes through the stomach slower than normal, her only option is treatment in Thailand.
From suspected off milk to a life-limiting diagnosis
The 36-year-old initially thought she had used expired milk when she suddenly started throwing up. After ten days of feeling unwell, she accepted it was more serious. Doctors first told her she had Crohn's disease, but the diagnosis was more complicated. Last February she booked a private consultation and discovered the full truth. As her weight dropped, her stomach became partially paralysed, and she has been placed on palliative care to make the rest of her life as comfortable as possible.
The health news came as Emilie was trying to rebuild her life after losing her son at 12 weeks, when he died in his sleep. The aesthetic clinic owner from St Albans, Hertfordshire, says she feels like she is being left to die. The Total Parenteral Nutrition (TPN) treatment she needs, which delivers nutrients directly into the bloodstream, is not available on the NHS in England, though she would be entitled to it in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.
Wedding day cut short
Emilie is fundraising to secure the money needed to go to Asia for one final attempt at staying alive to see her children Mia, 12, Taurus, 16, and Kai, 14 grow up. She spoke to the Mirror days after being forced to abandon her wedding day early, having just managed to marry her golf teacher husband Kyle, 41.
"It is the sad reality, but I just felt I had to cut the day short," she said. "I'm quite a hectic person and everyone will tell you, I over-stretched myself but we said our vows and that's the important thing. The thinner I get, the sicker I get. That's the nature of my illness, and it's a struggle. I'm just trying to keep going and trying to stay alive. I don't want to leave my children, that is the most difficult thing."
Fighting for treatment in Thailand
Emilie is still working to support her family, and a friend has set up a fundraiser to fund private treatment. She says she has been left with no choice but to go to Thailand, despite the estimated £40,000 costs. She explained that TPN treatment is a bag of fluids and lipids containing everything nutritional the body needs, fed through a main arterial line from the arm into the heart.
"The risk of having a central line is that you could get a blood clot - in Thailand they would put a cannula in me, and they will be giving me that bag for up to six hours," she said. "As long as I'm not sent into shock, or I put on weight too quickly, they will take the cannula out after 24 hours and there's no risk of clot. I've got everything crossed. I just can't say goodbye to my family."
She described the moment her world changed, recalling being violently sick for three days and initially thinking she had broken a rib. "When I saw the specialist he was like 'it's your stomach that's hurting not your rib'," she said. "It has been a very difficult few years for all of us, but I'm still here. I just want to give myself the chance of being around for my family for as long as possible."
