'I was so close to death, but I was saved by a miracle treatment'

manchestereveningnews.co.uk:

A mum says it was "like a miracle" after groundbreaking treatment saved her from a near-fatal blood clot. Helen Foster, 58, was rushed into hospital with intense chest pain where she was found to have a clot on her lungs.

However, she says she has been given "another shot at life" after undergoing a novel X-ray-guided procedure. Helen, from South Yorkshire, was one of the first patients in the county to benefit from the treatment, known as mechanical thrombectomy, where a medical device is used to physically suck blood clots out from the lung.

Without the treatment, the mum-of-three Helen was at risk of "deteriorating rapidly" her doctors say. But instead she visibly improved on the operating table, and she has now praised the team at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals for saving her life. READ MORE: Baby died after 'exhausted' mum sent home just four hours after birth Helen, from Sheffield, started to struggle with breathlessness and mobility problems a few weeks prior to her life-saving procedure but put it down to bad seizures, Yorkshire Live reports.

Over the next month, she continued to have difficulties and was unable to walk very far without having to catch her breath and stop for five minutes.