Zoe thought it was just festive fatigue, but then started to swell and was unable to move
08:03, 08 Jan 2026Updated 08:04, 08 Jan 2026
Zoe and Larna on Christmas Eve 2020 – the morning before she turned to stone (Cover Images)
A mum who found herself feeling weak and tired while following a Christmas lights trail thought it was just festive fatigue – until she ‘turned to stone’ on Christmas Day. Zoe Plumley thought she was just tired after feeling ill when she was out with her family in Bridgend, South Wales, trying to enjoy the festive atmosphere.
Her newborn daughter Larna was in her pram, and Zoe was trying to push on through the tiredness. “We were looking at the Christmas light trail, and I said to my partner George that the cold’s getting into my bones and I felt really sore,” she said. “By the end of the walk, I physically couldn’t push the buggy up the kerb. I just couldn’t do it.”
Zoe and her family abandoned the trail and headed home. “I woke up on Christmas Day to excruciating pain. I couldn’t even pop a paracetamol out of the packet. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t open any presents. My body just wasn’t bending the way it should. It felt like I’d turned to stone.”
Zoe in A&E on Christmas Eve 2020 – the start of many hospital trips and tests (Cover Images)
Zoe, 32 when she started to fall ill in 2020, tried to carry on. They travelled to her parents’ house in Somerset for a family Christmas, but Zoe was seriously ill. “I didn’t get to open presents. I couldn’t cuddle my baby properly. I couldn’t dress myself. My shoes didn’t fit because of the swelling. It was terrifying.
“By dinnertime, my parents were watching me literally balloon in front of them,” she says. “The swelling was incredible. And I couldn’t breathe properly. I told them, I have to go home.”
Back in Bridgend, Zoe’s condition worsened with all her joints screaming in pain. “I couldn’t go to the toilet without help. My partner had to pull me off the toilet. It was horrendous. It wasn’t just my hands or knees. Every joint in my body was affected. It was like my whole body was on fire. Not a burning pain, but just this intense, full-body pain that didn’t make sense.”
Zoe out with Larna in Easter 2022 (Cover Images)
George called the out-of-hours GP who called an ambulance to take Zoe to A&E where she was told she had pneumonia. “They gave me morphine and sent me home. It was two in the morning, and I was dragging my coat behind me because I couldn’t put it on.”At home she writhed in pain, at one point wetting herself on the floor because she had collapsed and couldn’t physically get herself up. Over the next few weeks, she phoned the GP every day, struggling at home, relying on Logan, then 10, to put her shoes on if George was away.“My GP was amazing – they pushed for urgent rheumatology referral because my bloods were through the roof,” she said. In January, she saw a specialist who confirmed what Zoe had feared. “He told me I had rheumatoid arthritis. I remember him asking me how it had affected me, and I said: ‘Have you ever tried to change a newborn baby’s nappy with no thumbs?’ Because I couldn’t. My thumbs didn’t work.”By February, Zoe was on methotrexate, a low-dose chemotherapy drug used to treat autoimmune conditions and had started biologic therapies. “The disease was so aggressive. I’ve now lost the joint in my thumb. The tissue’s just been eaten away.”
Zoe with George, Logan and Larna – Mothers Day 2025 (Cover Images)
Zoe’s life changed overnight and she now uses two crutches, wears wrist splints, and has adaptations around the house, including a fall alarm. And she lives in fear of winter bugs. “Even a cold can knock me out, because I’m on immunosuppressants,” she says. “When I go into a flare it can take weeks to recover from.”
She had to give up her work running a printing business and her partner George became her carer, just months before developing long Covid himself. “He caught it in January 2021 and it was bad. He’s been disabled by it ever since. So now we care for each other.”
Living with rheumatoid arthritis has been mentally as well as physically devastating. “It took a while for it to sink in. At first, I thought it was just another diagnosis, as I had already struggled with an autoimmune condition and diabetes.
Zoe Plumley (Cover Images)
“Then came the grief – realising my old self was gone. When the diabetes team recently reminded me that autoimmune diseases shorten your life expectancy, it really hit. I might not live to 80. I’ll be lucky to see 70.”
Zoe’s children, Logan, 15, and Larna, now 5, have had to adapt too. Logan is a registered young carer and has learned how to help when his mum can’t move. “Some mornings I physically can’t sit up without him or George. It feels like my bones are breaking.”
Now a disability consultant, Zoe runs her own company, L&L Specialist Services, supporting others with health conditions and invisible disabilities. “People still assume disability means a wheelchair. I’ve had strangers try to take my blue badge off me because I look ‘fine’. I’ve even pretended to limp just to avoid confrontation.”
Despite it all, Zoe is determined to keep going. “I take each day as it comes. I make the most of the good ones. And if I can do something to help others understand this condition, then that’s worth it.”