Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Don’t let others die like my Laura did
Emma’s plea after brain tumour tragedy
Emma McGuinness planned to wed her partner of seven years as soon as same-sex marriage was introduced in Northern Ireland.
But that dream was ripped from her when Co Tyrone woman Laura McGuigan died on December 12.
Laura had been suffering severe headaches for a week.
Emma, 26, said: “She thought it was migraines because she was sensitive to light and she started wearing sunglasses at work.
“But on the Saturday [December 9] she started vomiting. She started saying, ‘My head is really sore’ and I went to the toilet with her. I said, ‘Come on we’ll go to the hospital’ and she said, ‘No, it’s all right, it’s just so bright in here and the music with my migraine is really bad’.
“So we went to my friend’s house and waited outside for a while because she was being sick.
We went in and she went to sleep for an hour or two. I heard her wake up, she went to the kitchen and I followed her.
“She just started vomiting in the sink so I rang an ambulance.
“When they got her into the ambulance she started to come round and was ripping off the ECG things. Then they got the line in and she just looked up at me and I looked at the line, turned back around and her lips were blue.
“I was like, ‘She’s not breathing’, then they tried to get the mask on.
“I think she was gone in the back of ambulance before we even left my friend’s house. They said it was a brain tumour. It’s