'I'm still positive despite huge pain from my rare spinal condition'

"It feels as though I've pulled my hamstrings, torn my thigh muscles and then also pulled my calf muscles."

Helen Parry is one of the few people in the country to have suffered a spinal cavernoma, a rare condition which she says came out of the blue but caused her massive amounts of pain.

"I jumped out of the shower, went to dry my legs and in the lower part of my back was an intense pain," the 57-year-old said, when it happened in July.

"The pain was even worse when I lay down, it just erupted and flew down my legs."

Before it happened, she was a keen cyclist and walker but said the illness had completely changed her life.

Recalling that first day, she said after feeling the pain, she knew she had to rush to a sink in the bathroom "where I was violently sick".

"I was shaking and I thought at that point I needed to phone 111," Parry said.

"I told them it was 10 out of 10 pain so they sent an ambulance and took me to Hereford County Hospital, who were absolutely amazing."

Cavernoma are an abnormal collection of blood vessels in the body that the NHS says typically look like a raspberry - but at first doctors thought something else had happened to her.

An X-ray was carried out in the hospital and, suspecting she had suffered a slipped disc in her spine, they prescribed her very strong pain killers and sent her home.

However two days later, Parry said she began experiencing "really odd" symptoms.

"[My left leg] started going completely numb, my feet were burning hot and I was getting a prickly sensation down my legs, it was awful," she recalled.

Another ambulance was called and paramedics insisted Parry was taken back to hospital which was where, this time, doctors told her she had blood in her spinal cord.

"What had happened was [the blood] was compressing the nerves to my legs and basically stopped them from working," she explained.

"I couldn't even walk across a room. I had to have a walking frame, they were taking me around in a wheelchair and the pain was absolutely intense."

She was then taken to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham where they diagnosed her with a spinal cavernoma.

Parry was left needing assistance just to walk across a room. She said: "I never thought I'd need a walking frame at 56."

Cavernomas can cause several problems, such as bleeding, fits, headaches and neurological problems if they burst.

In Parry's case, with her one affecting her spine, which the Cavernoma Alliance UK said accounted for about 5% of total cavernomas, the 57-year-old said she believed she was among only 10 people in the UK to suffer one.

Describing the pain, she said: "It feels as though I've pulled my hamstrings, torn my thigh muscles and then also pulled my calf muscles."

Since July, Parry said it had slowly "gotten a little easier" but she was warned she might never make a complete recovery.

She suffered slight paralysis in her legs as a result of the cavernoma, which doctors warned her could become a more major issue if they were to operate on her.

Despite what she had been through, the 57-year-old said she remained positive and had managed to turn her injury into a hobby.

"I had to kind of think 'what can I do instead', so I started making more YouTube videos," she added.

"To be able to still walk about, to be able to still use my arms normally is such a blessing and I feel so grateful."

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