Lib Dem deputy leader Daisy Cooper has revealed how she was given just four days left to live without major surgery after being rushed to hospital.
Ms Cooper, who has Crohn’s disease, said her weight had dropped to seven stone and her arms were “black and blue” during the incident 12 years ago. In a moving speech to the party’s annual conference, she said the NHS “gave me my life back” and blasted the Tories for bringing the health service “to its knees”. Speaking of her own experience, she said good health and care services “transform people’s lives – and I should know because they transformed mine”.
She added: “You see, 12 years ago, I was rushed to hospital. A few weeks in, I was told that without major surgery, I had just four days left to live. My weight had dropped to around 7 stone. My eyesight was failing. My heart rate had plummeted. And my arms were black and blue.
“I was fed only through a feeding tube. But it wasn’t the prospect of major surgery that upset me – it was what they said next.”
Ms Cooper said doctors had told her even if she recovered from the surgery she may never be able to work again because her Crohn’s disease was “so aggressive”. She went on: “I lay in my bed and sobbed. I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed for 17 hours straight. I felt like my world had fallen apart.
“As a campaigner, I’ve always found my meaning and purpose in my work: the causes I believe in, the injustices I want to fight, the people I work with. All of it, potentially gone. Snatched away. Or at least that’s how it felt at the time.” Ms Cooper said she now worries for those suffering with similar symptoms and struggling to access scans, GPs or become stuck on a hospital corridor.
Hitting out at the Tories’ record after 14 years in power, she added: “It’s hard to overestimate just how bad the situation is. The Conservatives legacy could not be worse. They have left the nation’s health in a terrible state, ripping away people’s freedom to live their lives to the full.”
In her keynote speech in Brighton, Ms Cooper also told the new Labour Health Secretary Wes Steeting: “”Take up our ideas or put forward your own, and if we support them, we’ll back them.” But she warned the Lib Dems will hold the Government’s “feet to the fire” if it fails to deliver the “right level of ambition”.