A woman was told she had just 12 hours to live after 50 pieces of faecal matter became lodged inside her bowel, causing it to rupture. Clare Large, 42, from Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, was rushed to Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Gateshead, by ambulance after experiencing severe stomach pains in October 2025.
Emergency surgery and coma
Following a CT scan, doctors discovered Clare had 50 separate deposits of faecal matter trapped in her bowel, resulting in a rupture that spread the matter throughout her internal organs. The condition, known as diverticulitis, involves the development of small pouches in the colon and is prevalent in those over 50, often presenting no symptoms.
Medics warned Clare that without surgery to remove part of her bowel, she would have died within 12 hours. During the life-saving operation, she was fitted with an emergency stoma bag and placed into an induced coma. She remained unconscious for three weeks.
Miracle recovery
Clare's husband, Christopher, 43, was advised to prepare their children for the worst. However, two days after doctors replaced her ventilator with a tracheostomy to assess whether she could breathe unaided, she regained consciousness.
Clare, a stay-at-home mum of two children aged six and seven, described the pain as comparable to labour contractions. She said: "I woke up in the morning and got out of bed and the pain was unbearable. I thought I was having a baby – it felt similar."
Long road to recovery
Clare stayed in hospital for a further six weeks while she relearnt how to walk. She had a wound "the size of a man's head" on her abdomen, which had to heal from the outside inwards. Today, the wound remains unhealed and is roughly the size of a "10 pence piece".
She will eventually require surgery to reverse her stoma and address an incisional hernia left behind following her emergency operation. Clare says her condition was triggered by diverticulitis, which she was living with at stage three without showing symptoms. She noted that the only link doctors could draw was a period of inactivity for about a year after she broke both legs seriously.
Clare's next surgeries are scheduled to occur once she reaches two years into her recovery.
