Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
‘I had my funeral
Leann gets life on track after seven brain ops
A WOMAN has told how she went from arranging her own funeral when she was left paralysed and blind after brain surgery, to turning her life around and running her own business.
Leann Sutherland, 28, was born with a Chiari malformation, where the lower part of the brain pushes down into the spinal canal.
Throughout her childhood, she was plagued by severe headaches and would also black out.
As she grew older, the symptoms worsened but doctors could never find out what the issue was.
Then an MRI scan showed she was suffering from the Chiari malformation.
She was rushed into hospital for emergency brain surgery but complications meant that she ended up undergoing seven operations and was left blind and paralysed.
The experience left Leann, from Whitfield, despondent and she admits she “wanted to die” as she lay in her hospital bed.
She told the Tele today that, in her darkest hour, not only did she make plans for her own funeral, she began to save money to travel to Switzerland to be euthanised — and even begged her own mum to help her take her life.
She said: “I was 21 years old and I had my own funeral planned.
“It was only supposed to be one surgery but then it ended up being seven. It was really bad, I didn’t want to be here — I had never felt pain like that.
“The pain was so bad that I tried to get £10,000 together for assisted suicide in Switzerland.
“This was something that had been affecting me all my life, through school and with jobs — and now it was even worse.
“I went pretty insane, to be honest. I was staring at four walls in hospital for months on end.
“I even asked my mum to take my life — but she told me that there was no way she would do that because she knew that I was going to get better.”
Slowly but surely, Leann regained her strength — her sight was restored and her mobility began to improve.
Despite her illness, Leann managed to open her own nail salon in a log cabin in her back garden.
The business took off and she now owns LS Nails and Beauty on Perth Road and was recently nominated for a business award.
She credits her success to the drive and determination that she found in herself as she battled back from the brink.
Leann said that her main source of strength throughout the dark time was her mum, Gwenn.
She said: “Without her, I would have killed myself — I know that for a fact.
“She was the one who nursed me back to health.
“She was the one that made me believe that I was going to get better and that made me know that it would happen. I was always a strong person, I had been through a lot.
“My dad died when I was 16 and my family had fallen apart but we had made it through.