A young woman was given just 48 hours to live after a series of terrifying symptoms left her regularly hospitalised throughout university.
Ciára McManigan was struggling with bloating and blood in her stool at 21, which her GP put down to constipation causing piles.
When she started to drop weight and vomit regularly, the 25-year-old knew something more sinister was at play.
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She was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis (UC) – a bowel disease where the colon and rectum become inflamed, causing pain – which led to debilitating symptoms, culminating in frequent trips to A&E for help.
But on one such trip, doctors delivered the terrifying news that Ciára was seriously unwell – and would die from a perforated bowel within 48 hours if she didn’t have a subtotal colectomy [surgery to remove most of the large intestine].
“I was in a state of shock,” the ecologist and scuba diving travel agency owner told Need To Know.
“I was told on a Friday night that my bowel was about to perforate and that I needed the surgery, and my dad asked what would happen if I didn’t have it that weekend – with the idea of giving me a few days to process everything and think about my options.
“But the surgeon said I would die within 48 hours if I didn’t go through with it.
“No words can justify how I felt.
“I was so unwell that I knew I’d either wake up from the operation feeling better, or I wouldn’t wake up at all.
“By the time I was due to have the surgery, I’d been in hospital for two weeks and had been suffering and in constant pain.
“My main concern was no longer for me – but for my poor parents, hearing that they could lose their child.”
Ciára, originally from Kent but now living in Hereford, had first become unwell in 2021, with bloating and blood in her stool the first signs that something was amiss.
She said: “My GP didn’t initially run tests and said it was likely constipation causing haemorrhoids, and I had no reason to not believe that.
“I was given laxatives and went on my way, but suddenly I started losing loads of weight, throwing up, I was losing hair and had bad skin.
“My dad asked me at the Christmas dinner table if I had bulimia because I had to leave to be sick.
“I was on the toilet hourly and passing blood and nothing else.”
In early 2022, shortly after her 21st birthday, Ciára took herself to A&E with unrelated chest pains, and her bloodwork came back showing she was severely anaemic.
Further tests, including an ultrasound on her bowels, found she had UC.
With doctors finally paying attention to her case, Ciára was trialled on various different drugs to keep the autoimmune disease at bay – but she was often back in hospital at the stage where the drugs ceased working and her symptoms would be back with a bang.
She said: “I couldn’t hold down food, I’d be on the toilet hourly, and I’d pass out all the time – even while brushing my teeth.
“It was awful, just an absolute mess.”
On one such admittance, in May 2023, Ciára felt like a “lost cause”, with just one medication left for doctors to try her on.
She was placed on a 24-hour drip, but spiked a high fever and her bowel was rejecting all food and fluids.
She said: “I was freaking out – it was the worst I’d ever felt, and by this point I was very used to being ill.
“I knew something was seriously, seriously wrong.”
During that admittance, she was given the shocking news that she wouldn’t live to see the next week if she didn’t have the high-risk surgery done – and soon.
Thankfully, the on-call surgeon was a colorectal specialist, and while the surgery took 10.5 hours – nearly double the time they had estimated – Ciára’s colon was successfully removed, and she was fitted with a stoma bag.
She said: “Doctors told my parents that, as they were pulling my intestine out just below the stomach, it felt like wet tissue paper because it was so damaged and crumbling.”
She woke up in intensive care and, despite being in recovery from a life-changing operation, found that she immediately felt healthier, and was determined to resume normal life as soon as possible.
Ciára said: “I’d been doing all of these things – like getting back to scuba diving and being in the gym – while really unwell, passing out and vomiting all the time.
“So while my wounds hurt, I felt so much better after the surgery.
“Suddenly I felt healthy again.
“Everything physically hurt, but I wasn’t dying, and I wasn’t poorly.
“It really helped me adjust to the concept of my stoma – just how immediately healthy I felt.”
She has continued to steadily recover since, and had another surgery in 2024 to make her stoma bag permanent, with a surgery to remove and sew up her rectum.
Having undergone the surgery just two weeks prior to her university graduation, a personal accomplishment of Ciára’s was being able to attend.
She said: “I’d been a trooper through my degree, even though I’d been so sick, so I deserved to walk across that stage – and I did.
“I’d just had major surgery but I was fine, and very happy with myself for being able to do it.”
In the year that followed from her surgery, Ciára found a new outlook on life, and spent months travelling the world and enjoying her newfound freedom.
She said: “I really experienced life at its fullest and, in a way, I think if I hadn’t had that big traumatic life event happen, maybe I wouldn’t have felt the need to have done all of that and had those crazy experiences.
“I have such a different outlook on life – I don’t want to plod through life with a 9-5 office job, I want to make sure I’m enjoying every day.
“My life could have been so different if I didn’t have surgery and didn’t look at life through this new lens.
“I don’t take a day for granted and grab life by the bag, as I like to say!
“It’s so good to still be here.”
