A young Belfast mum is encouraging others to always seek a second opinion after she was diagnosed with an extremely rare condition after suffering several strokes.
Ashley McWilliams fell ill for the first time while out at a KFC in 2018, the first of four strokes over a three year period.
"My whole left side of my body just went completely numb and I couldn't speak - I literally could not string a sentence together," she told Belfast Live.
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"I lay on that table praying to my mum, saying I'm too young to die, I don't want to die.
"It sort of resolved quickly though and I was able to ring my brother to say that I thought I'd had a stroke and needed to go to the hospital.
"But because it resolved quickly and I was able to talk to them at the hospital, they decided I was too young to have a stroke and sent me home."
It was another two years before the 23-year-old took another stroke, this time at her dad's house.
"I was walking up the stairs in my dad's house and again the whole left side of my body went numb," she said.
"I ended up managing to get up off the floor and getting up to my bedroom and I said to my partner at the time that I thought I had taken a stroke.
"But because it resolved quickly again, I went to sleep and I just left it.
"You hear of like 60-year-olds having strokes, you don't hear about it happening to young people."
In March of last year, Ashley found out she was pregnant and told Belfast Live she had a good pregnancy experience right through to October.
"I was standing in the kitchen cooking bacon and I had been feeling quite low and out of energy, when usually I'm up and at it.
"I literally folded over like a deckchair and my partner's wee sister who was there thought I was giving birth.
"We got an ambulance and while I was walking into it, I could still speak.
"But I went into a state of shock and my left arm was just stuck to my chest, I could not move it and my left leg was trailing behind me when I walked."
What followed was a series of scans and tests, as doctors tried to rule out everything it wasn't, in order to find the right diagnosis.
In the meantime, Ashley gave birth to her daughter Hope in November, but two days later she was back in hospital having suffered another stroke.
Eventually in February of this year, she was diagnosed with Sneddon Syndrome, a condition which affects the arteries, increasing the likelihood of a blood clot, after doctors had noticed a rash on her legs that is a symptom of the condition.
It is extremely rare, with estimates putting it at one in 250,000 people affected by it.
"You know your own body, that's what I want to tell people," Ashley told Belfast Live. "I wish I didn't leave that hospital that day in 2018.
"My brain is physically scarred now from all these traumas in my brain, but I'm stronger now than I ever was.
"If I get myself too worked up, I feel like I'm going to take a stroke.
"It's just a really hard thing to deal with, being told at the age of 22 that you've got Sneddon's Syndrome."
Ashley said that the birth of her daughter has given her a focus and she is keen to encourage people to persist in seeking treatment if they don't feel right.
"Hope's up walking now and she's turning one next week and it's nearly a year since I've had my last stroke," she said.
"Fingers crossed it doesn't happen again, but I am high-risk.
"Every single day I wake up, I'm thankful I'm here."
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