Singleton’s dream gap year turned to a nightmare when she died twice and spent two months in a coma

Freya, 26, noticed bruising along her lasered bikini line and soon her trip to Australia turned into a horror story.
A young singleton has revealed how what was supposed to be a carefree gap-year in Australia turned out to be a hellish ordeal – in which she died twice and spent two months in a coma on the other side of the world from home.

Freya Clarke, 26, had quit her sales and marketing job after becoming “bored” with London life and was looking forward to a year of adventures.

But she realized something wasn’t right just days after landing in Sydney in October 2017, when she noticed strange, dark and heavy bruising along her bikini line.

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She’d recently had laser hair removal on the area as she prepared for lots of sunbathing, but feared this wasn’t a normal reaction to the beauty treatment.

To be on the safe side, Freya went to the local GP for blood tests – and was soon given the shocking news that she had acute myeloid leukemia, a dangerous form of cancer that affects the white blood cells.

“My first thought was just, ‘Well, this is going to ruin my holiday’. Then the shock began to kick in and I was just thinking that this couldn’t be happening to me,” she said.

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The vivacious 26-year-old from East Grinstead in Sussex, who had previously had a clean bill of health and who had never even been admitted into a hospital before, lost her hair, was in constant pain and even died twice during her months in the Randwick Hospital in Sydney, when her heart stopped for several minutes.

To make matters worse, Freya also caught an infection, leading to her having an eight-hour operation to remove her appendix and right fallopian tube, which may mean that she will never be able to conceive.

“I’ve been dealt some pretty severe blows over the last year,” she said. “It’s certainly not what you expect: to pop off on holiday and come back with cancer and a 5-inch scar down your stomach. It’s pretty hard to come to terms with.”

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Freya had been planning her year-long getaway to Australia for the previous eight months – after visiting a school friend, who has lived there for two years, in January 2017.

She explained: “I was feeling bored with living in London and wanted to get out. I had never really traveled that much, never taken a gap year or been out of Europe on my own, so I just decided after visiting in January that I would go out there, maybe to stay forever.”

Working 65 hours a week in London to pay for the flights, with shifts in a bar on top of her day job at a brewery, Freya says she was exhausted but excited for her new life in Australia where she would get a ‘work and travel’ visa that would enable her to live there for a year.

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Her friend of 15 years Caitlin, 26, who she’d known since school, agreed to share the adventure with her, and the pair planned to work in Sydney for a few months before traveling along the east coast.

Finally, in October 2017, she and Caitlin packed their bags and boarded a flight to their first stop off Bali, where they spent two weeks sunbathing and sightseeing before heading for Sydney.

Looking back, Freya said it was here, on the white-sand beaches of the Indonesian island, that she first had signs that something wasn’t right.

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“I had been feeling very tired, but I just thought that was because I had been working so hard to pay for the trip,” she said. “I also had these weird bruises on my leg, but again I just brushed it off and told myself I had picked them up while bumping into things at the bar.”

“Then in Bali, I had a very long and heavy period, which did seem strange. I tried to brush it off again, thinking maybe it was to do with the stress of travel, but it played on my mind.”

When she and Caitlin arrived in Sydney, they stayed with their old school friend Lauren and her boyfriend Josh in the suburb of Bronte and spent the first few days looking for employment in marketing and hunting for an apartment of their own.

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Looking forward to a year spent sunbathing, the pair also went to have laser hair removal on their armpits and bikini lines.

Just 12 hours having the laser treatment, Freya noticed the top of her legs and armpits had turned black with heavy bruising.

Until then, she had been trying to put the series of strange ailments to the back of her mind. But now she began to worry something was not right with her.

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“I thought I might have anemia but it certainly never crossed my mind that it could be anything really serious,” she said.

But urged on by Caitlin, Freya went to the doctor’s two days later, where blood tests revealed that something was very wrong.

Freya recalled: “They weren’t completely sure at first what it was, and I just thought they must have made a mistake because apart from the bruising I didn’t feel ill. In fact, I remember feeling a bit pissed off because we were supposed to look around an apartment that day.”

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But Freya’s annoyance quickly turned to horror when she was told by doctors that the strange complaints she had been suffering over the past month were not a random series of coincidences, but the symptoms of acute leukemia.

“The hardest part was telling my mum,” said Freya, who was in floods tears after receiving the awful news. “I handed the phone over to Caitlin and asked her to tell mum, but she was crying too much too, so eventually the doctor had to tell her.”

Freya’s mum, Christine, 59, flew out on the next flight to Sydney, leaving Freya’s distraught father Peter, 63, a carpenter, and sister Sorrel, 29, a teacher, back in England.

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Her mum, also a teacher, stayed by Freya’s bedside for the next three months as she underwent a strong bout of chemotherapy.

Freya reacted terribly to the treatment. She was put into an induced eight-week coma to help her body cope with the drugs.

However, that led to further complications when doctors tried to bring her out of sedation and her heart stopped beating.

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“My brain has blocked out most of that time,” explained Freya. “I reacted very violently to the drugs and my body basically freaked out, which led to my heart stopping on two occasions, when I would have been technically dead before being resuscitated.”

With things looking bad for Freya, her dad and her sister were called out to Australia in November, as doctors thought she wouldn’t make it.

Thankfully, though, her condition began to improve once she out of the coma, and Peter and Sorrel stayed on until just after Christmas, which Freya celebrated from her hospital bed.

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“It sounds weird but it was one of the nicest Christmases ever because I had all my family over there with me,” said Freya. “Caitlin was there too, and my friend from home, James, flew out to surprise me a few days before Christmas.”

Finally, in January 2018, Freya was well enough to fly back home but, still needing further treatment, she was admitted to The Royal Marsden the following day.

There, due to an infection probably caused by leukemia, Freya had an eight-hour operation to remove her appendix and right fallopian tube.

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Now recovering at her parents’ home in Sussex, Freya is keeping herself busy with babysitting jobs and a pairing. She has not yet received an all-clear and knows she may require further chemotherapy if cancer returns.

She is also working closely with charity Leukaemia Care, supporting their Spot Leukaemia campaign to raise awareness of the signs of the disease via special symptoms cards, which can be ordered from their website and presented to doctors.

“I know I will probably have to have more treatment which won’t be nice, but actually I feel fine now, much better than I have done since the whole thing started,” she said.

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Despite the terrible ordeal she has been through, she is still keen to go back to Australia and experience the adventure that has been denied to her.

She said: “I would love to go back there one day. But now I’m not sure I could stay. The only way I have managed to get through the last year is because of my friends and family – and I couldn’t face leaving them behind now.”

LONDON (AP) — Millions of voters in England cast ballots Thursday in an array of local elections, the last big test before a looming U.K. general election that all indicators suggest will see the Labour Party return to power after 14 years in the wilderness.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was barely able to point to any big success for his Conservative Party, confirming that the electoral coalition that gave the party a big win in the 2019 general election has frayed, if not completely dissolved, in the wake of a series of political dramas and the cost of living crisis.

For Labour leader Keir Starmer, the results provided confirmation of what opinion polls have shown for two years — that Labour has recovered from its 2019 low and is on course to win the election comfortably.

Here are five things we learned:

It's possible.

Though the Conservatives lost around half the 1,000 council seats they held, and suffered a huge defeat in the special parliamentary election in Blackpool South, a coastal resort town in the northwest of England, it looks as though Sunak will not face a revolt just yet from anxious lawmakers in his party.

That's largely because the Conservative candidate in the mayoral contest in Tees Valley in the northeast of England hung on, albeit with a much depressed vote. That helped soothe some concerns despite losses elsewhere.

However, the defeat of the Conservative incumbent mayor in the West Midlands could prompt another bout of jitters among lawmakers increasingly concerned about their ability to hold onto their seats in a general election. Sunak is under pressure from different wings of the party to go further right or move to the center.

Overall, the results show that Sunak hasn't improved the Conservatives’ overall position following the damage caused by the actions of his predecessors, Boris Johnson, who was effectively ousted, and then replaced by Liz Truss, whose tenure lasted only 49 days after her economic policies rocked financial markets.

Probably in the fall.

In the U.K., the date of the general election rests in the hands of the prime minister. It has to take place by January, and Sunak has repeatedly said that his “working assumption” was that it would take place in the second half of 2024.

Though that theoretically could take place as soon as July, most Conservative lawmakers have indicated that the best time would be in the fall, when recent tax cuts may register with voters, inflation has fallen further, and interest rates may have been cut — helping to fuel an economic feelgood factor.

Waiting till the fall may also give the government a chance to cut taxes again in another budget. Conservatives will also be hoping that the controversial plan to send some asylum-seekers to Rwanda will have got off the ground and that there is evidence that it is acting as a deterrent for those seeking to make the dangerous crossing in small boats across the English Channel from France to England.

It looks like it.

In historical terms, Labour has a mountain to climb, if it’s going to form the next government. Its performance at the last general election in 2019 was its worst since 1935. Starmer has tried to bring the party back to the center of U.K. politics after the leadership of veteran left-winger Jeremy Corbyn.

Starmer’s approach has clearly worked if Thursday's results are anything to go by. Labour won control of councils in England that the party hasn’t held for decades, and was successful on a massive swing away from the Conservatives in Blackpool South, which if repeated at the general election would lead to a big majority.

Labour won in areas that voted for Britain’s departure from the European Union in 2016 and where it was crushed by Brexit-backer Johnson, such as Hartlepool in the northeast of England, and Thurrock in southeast England. It also seized control of Rushmoor, a leafy and military-heavy council in the south of England where it had never won, showing that it has a broad base of support.

It’s fair to say that enthusiasm levels are far lower than those that heralded the arrival of Labour's Tony Blair before the 1997 general election.

That may be partly because of the more challenging economic backdrop, but Starmer, formerly a human rights lawyer, lacks the razzmatazz of Blair.

It'll be tough.

One of the contributing factors to Blair’s landslide victory in 1997 came from so-called tactical voting, whereby some voters put aside their political preference and vote for whoever has the best chance of defeating the party they oppose the most. In 1997, that was the Conservatives.

Tactical voting has reemerged and was evident somewhat in Thursday's elections where Conservative candidates lost out to other parties, not just Labour, but also to the centrist Liberal Democrats and also to the Green Party.

The Conservatives may also be outflanked from the right, with Reform U.K. poised to stand candidates across Britain. In Thursday's elections, it was a minimal presence but where the party did stand, it clearly took votes away from Conservative candidates. That was notable in Blackpool South, where the Reform candidate was just shy of usurping the Conservatives into second.

Should Reform, which claims to be tougher on issues such as immigration and on Brexit, do as well in a general election, then it could lead to other parties, notably Labour, defeating Conservatives.

It certainly looks like it.

In some areas with large Muslim populations, such as Blackburn and Oldham in northwest England, Labour candidates appear to have suffered as a result of the leadership’s strongly pro-Israel stance over the conflict in Gaza.

Labour's vote share was clearly impacted, but the effect on its performance in a general election remains unclear, as those seats with a big Muslim population generally have big Labour majorities.

London Mayoral Labour Party candidate Sadiq Khan pats his dog Luna as they pose for the media he arrives to vote in London, Thursday, May 2, 2024. Khan, is seeking re-election, and standing against 12 other candidates for the post of Mayor of London. There are other Mayoral elections in English cities and as well as local council elections. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Britain's Labour leader Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria leave the polling station in his Holborn and St Pancras constituency, after casting their votes in the local and London Mayoral election, in north London, Thursday May 2, 2024. (Stefan Rousseau/PA via AP)

Counting begins at the Blackpool South by-election at Blackpool Sports Centre in Blackpool, England, Thursday, May 2, 2024. The by-election was triggered after the resignation of Scott Benton. (Peter Byrne/PA via AP)

Tourists on a cycle tour in wet weather plastic macs, cycle past the Houses of Parliament, in London Friday, May 3, 2024. Britain's governing Conservative Party is suffering heavy losses as local election results pour in Friday, piling pressure on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak ahead of a U.K. general election in which the main opposition Labour Party appears increasingly likely to return to power after 14 years. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Conservative party candidate Lord Ben Houchen, left, with Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak following his re-election as Tees Valley Mayor in Teesside, England, Friday May 3, 2024. (Owen Humphreys/PA via AP)

Britain's Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer with newly elected East Midlands mayor Claire Ward during a visit to Forest Town Arena in Mansfield, England, Saturday May 4, 2024. (Jacob King/PA via AP)

Britain's Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer, center, and shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves, celebrate with David Skaith at Northallerton Town Football Club, North Yorkshire, after winning the York and North Yorkshire mayoral election, Friday May 3, 2024. (Owen Humphreys/PA via AP)