'I said goodbye to my family as I prepared to die - then a miracle happened'
A 70-year-old woman who was "prepared to die" and even wrote her final goodbyes to her family has experienced a "miraculous" recovery. She has even managed to move out of the care home she had been forced into by her ill health.
Carole's health problems began after her husband's death in 2016 when she started overworking herself to keep busy. When she finally retired at 65, the Devon local could feel her health rapidly deteriorating.
She told to NeedToKnow: "I noticed my bladder and gut had both stopped working, and I was really struggling to live comfortably. Over the next few years, I became increasingly ill, fatigued, and debilitated, also living with a lot of gut pain.
"I was so depressed and anxious as I had no idea what was happening to me, and the doctors had no answers. I became reliant upon antidepressants and different drugs."
By late 2023, Carole - she has not given her last name - decided to move into a residential care home as she found herself frequently visiting A&E. She said: "Every time I went to them, they would check me over and just send me straight back home.
"I was constantly being told it was just anxiety, but it felt as though someone's hand was constantly squeezing my heart. My mobility had drastically declined, and I was in a poor state both physically and mentally.
"I knew I was going to die. I just felt so sick and like no one could fix it. I decided to write poems to my family as a way of saying goodbye."
However, Carole's daughter Anna, with her background in the health industry, refused to accept this fate for her mum. The 42 year old believed she knew where to look and eventually discovered a wearable medical device called Nurosym, which stimulates the vagus nerve, a crucial link between your brain, heart and digestive system.
In November, a full year after moving into the care home, Carole received her Nurosym and within days she began noticing improvements in her sleep patterns. This kept on improving, leading her to beg the staff to let her out of her wheelchair.
She explained: "When you look into it, the vagus nerve was the answer to all of my conditions, but there seems to be an ignorance to it. The doctors just never mentioned it.
"It was miraculous, everything just started to get better! After my sleep initially started to improve within just a couple of days, I started to see there might be a chance for me to get some quality of life back, but it just kept on improving.
"I was starting to worry the care home staff as everyone really just sat around in their chairs, and I had only been in wheelchairs since I came, but suddenly I wanted to walk around and just kept asking them to let me out!".
Carole began to reduce her medication intake and managed to move back into her own home in April. Her recovery was so remarkable that it inspired Anna to purchase her own Nurosym and give it a go.
She said: "Mum's not susceptible to placebo at all, this is something that has really worked for her, and changed her life. She has no side effects anymore from the ridiculous number of drugs she was having to take, and we desperately want people to know there is a way for people to get better in a non-invasive way.
"I've even invested in my own device as I suffer from anxiety. For me, my sleep improved within just a few weeks, I don't get this sinking feeling in my stomach anymore, and I just have such a positive frame of mind that it's completely changed my outlook."
Carole added: "My friends used to come and see me and just cry; now they're still crying when they visit, but it's for a completely different reason."
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