When a sudden and severe pain came over Thomas Leahy in the summer of 2021, he knew that something serious was going on. He went to the emergency department, but was told everything looked okay, and to take some paracetamol. But it didn't even take the edge off.
Nothing was working to reduce the sharp and intense pain that Thomas could feel in his chest, spine and torso, and it wasn't going away. So he kept going back to Morriston Hospital in Swansea where he lived at the time, as well as the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff , where he worked. It took months and months of repeated visits, but there was nothing visibly wrong with him.
It was the middle of the pandemic and Thomas was recommended to try physiotherapy, before then being told by the physio they "didn't like the sound of this", and advised to get more scans done privately. READ MORE: 'Doctors thought my little boy had a bug, but he needed brain surgery' READ MORE: 'I had a heart attack at just 37 years old and this is what it felt like' "The pain just was just 10 out of 10 excruciating," Thomas, now 36, explained. "The person I saw privately put me in an MRI scan, they just didn't like the sound of it, with the spine.
And you always know when it's bad because they ring you up the following day, and they said 'You've got damage on your spine.'" The consultant that Thomas saw privately referred him immediately to Morriston hospital to have another brain and spine scan. He was told: "We think it might be multip.
