Woman recovered from darkest days to pull massive truck across car …
A woman recovered from a rare illness to pull a massive truck across a car park.
Lucy Hewson, 36, from St Helens[1] has been battling Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension (IIH) for nine years. IIH is a build-up of pressure around the brain, which can cause symptoms like vision changes and severe headaches and migraines. In some cases, the pressure can cause permanent damage to eyesight and mobility.
According to the NHS[2], the exact causes for IIH remain unknown. It mainly affects women in their twenties and thirties and occurs most often In women who have gained weight, but the reason for this is still unclear.
Speaking about her experience, Lucy said: “A lot of people who have IIH are on disability benefits, they can't work, they can't function. The pain is just unreal.”
She added: “It mimics a brain tumour. My speech got really bad, it was just all over the place.”
A year after moving to St Helens from Somerset, her IIH flared up again when her vision began to rapidly deteriorate. Not being able to drive because of this was devastating for Lucy as she runs a haulage company.
Thankfully, Lucy was able to receive help from The Walton Centre[4] in Fazakerley[5], which specialises in neurology and neurosurgery. Clinicians recommended a stent to ease the pressure in her skull, which has been transformative, with her eyesight and speech patterns now restored.
She said: “If I hadn’t had moved, the Walton Centre would never have been able to take on my case and I probably wouldn’t have been helped. That’s why I was so hell bent on helping them. In my eyes they’ve given me my life back.”
Lucy came up with a plan to raise money for the hospital’s charity while driving down the M6 - pulling her own truck across a car park. However, Lucy was still suffering from IIH at the time and the pressure it would cause to her made her doctors very wary.
She said: “The neurologist said absolutely not. He was like, ‘if you do this, you will go blind.’ That's when I realised how serious it was. I said to him, ‘I'm still doing this truck pull, I'm not letting this stop me.’ I think he thought I was a bit mad.”
The stent, along with Lucy’s intensive weight loss classes four times per week, put her on the right track. Lucy claims the people at the Walton Centre were amazed at how quickly she recovered in such a short space of time.
She said: “The epistemologist said he’d never seen a person in such a severe position as me heal as well or as quickly. The only thing they can think of was that I was so determined to get back into the gym and push my body back to some normality that it sped up the process a little.”
Lucy was given the go ahead for the lorry pull and on July 10, she pulled a nine-tonne lorry across her gym’s local car park.
She said: “People say, ‘I could never go to the gym’. Well I only started going to the gym two years ago and I've just pulled a truck across the car park.”
Lucy raised £3,000 during this for the Walton Centre’s charity. She believes that, as long as the money helps just one person, her efforts won’t have been in vain.
Lucy thanked her close support circle and the hospital for encouraging her through what has been an incredibly difficult time. Now, she is hoping her efforts can inspire others with the rare illness to not give in.
Lucy said: “Don't get me wrong, I had bad days but I'm not gonna let it win. It just says to people, ‘there is life.’
“It's made me stronger as a person. It makes me want to give hope to other people. Even on your darkest days, just keep fighting. If you do, you will get out the other end.”
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References
- ^ St Helens (www.liverpoolecho.co.uk)
- ^ NHS (www.nhs.uk)
- ^ Furious Liverpool student 'cheered on' after staging protest at graduation ceremony (www.liverpoolecho.co.uk)
- ^ The Walton Centre (www.liverpoolecho.co.uk)
- ^ Fazakerley (www.liverpoolecho.co.uk)
- ^ Don't miss the biggest and breaking stories by signing up to the Echo Daily newsletter here (www.liverpoolecho.co.uk)
- ^ TikTok (www.tiktok.com)
- ^ Instagram (www.instagram.com)
- ^ Facebook (www.facebook.com)
- ^ Twitter (twitter.com)