Clare Large, 42, was rushed to hospital in an ambulance after she began experiencing extreme stomach pains – and doctors told her she was 12 hours from death
SWNSEmilyPhillips (Emily Phillips)
14:16, 27 Sep 2026
Clare Large, with husband Christopher and their daughters at hospital(Image: Clare Large / SWNS)
A woman was informed she had just 12 hours to live when 50 pieces of faecal matter became lodged inside her bowel, causing it to rupture. Clare Large, 42, was “living a normal life” in October 2025 when she suddenly began suffering severe stomach pains one evening.
The mum-of-two described the pain as being comparable to labour contractions and was rushed by ambulance to Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Gateshead. Following a CT scan, doctors discovered Clare had 50 separate deposits of faecal matter that had become trapped in her bowel, resulting in a rupture that spread the matter throughout her internal organs.
The condition – known as diverticulitis – is marked by the development of small pouches in the colon and is prevalent in those over 50, frequently presenting no symptoms. In Clare’s severe case, medics warned her that without surgery to remove part of her bowel, she would have died within 12 hours.
During the life-saving operation, she was fitted with an emergency stoma bag and placed into an induced coma – but “didn’t wake up” and remained unconscious for three weeks.
With Clare’s husband Christopher, 43, advised to prepare the children for the worst, she miraculously regained consciousness two days after doctors replaced her ventilator with a tracheostomy at the three-week point to assess whether she could breathe unaided.
Clare was induced into a coma due to the severity of the surgery but failed to wake once in recovery(Image: Clare Large / SWNS)
With a wound “the size of a man’s head” on her abdomen, Clare required it to heal from the outside inwards. Today, the wound remains unhealed and Clare describes it as being roughly the size of a “10 pence piece”.
She will eventually require surgery to reverse her stoma and also address the incisional hernia left behind following her emergency operation – which currently means she continues to rely on a wheelchair.
Clare, a stay-at-home mum from Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, says: “I was basically living a normal life – I’m a mother of two children aged six and seven.
“I didn’t realise I had anything wrong with me. I didn’t feel ill or anything like that. I went to bed one night as usual and woke up in the night with a pain in my stomach.
“I sent my husband a text as he was in another room and said I had a bad pain in my stomach and he said ‘don’t worry, try and get some sleep’.
Clare Large with her daughters.(Image: Clare Large / SWNS)
“I woke up in the morning and got out of bed and the pain was unbearable. I thought I was having a baby – it felt similar.
“I told them at the hospital how much pain I was in and said I feel like something is ripping open inside of me. They did a scan and detected a catastrophic rupture of the bowel and said if I’d been sent home I would have been dead within 12 hours 100%.”
Clare was transported by ambulance to Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Gateshead on 3 October 2025, where a CT scan confirmed she needed an urgent Hartmann’s procedure to remove part of her bowel. “They said 50 pieces of faecal matter had been stuck inside me and had spread through my system into my internal organs,” Clare told Talk to the Press.
Clare was given an emergency stoma bag and was placed into a medically induced coma owing to the seriousness of the operation, but she did not regain consciousness while in recovery.
She said: “I was unresponsive in the coma, had sepsis, peritonitis and double pneumonia and finally the doctors called my family in and said to my husband that they had tried very hard but I wasn’t responding to anything and it was time that he started to prepare the children for the worst.
“One of the doctors said one thing we’ve not tried is taking the ventilator out and putting a tracheostomy in to see if she can breathe – a tracheostomy sometimes can help.
“I woke up two days after that.”
Clare stayed in hospital for a further six weeks while she relearnt how to walk.
She said: “The wound in my stomach was the size of a man’s head, it was huge and I had to leave the wound completely open with no staples. I had to heal the wound from the outside in.
“The weirdest part of the story was whilst I was in the coma I had lived another life in my head. I woke up and thought my husband had divorced me and that he was remarried.
“He was sat by my bed and I couldn’t understand why he was there.”
Clare says her condition was triggered by diverticulitis – and she says she was living at stage three of the illness without showing any symptoms. “It’s kind of like the ageing of the bowel, you see it in 70 or 80-year-old people,” Clare says.
“The bowel is thin and produces pockets of infection – in my case faeces – until it’s so full it’s ripped open.
“It kills the elderly but it’s not something you normally see in people my age especially people who have not had previous issues. The only thing doctors could draw a link to was the fact I’d previously broken both my legs seriously and had a period of inactivity for about a year.
“You’ve got to keep mobile to keep your bowel moving healthily. All the nurses, doctors and surgeons said it’s been a miracle – genuinely, those were the words that have been used.
“It’s a miracle I’ve survived it. I was very blessed and lucky to have the skilled surgeon and the NHS staff I had and that’s the only reason I believe I survived.”
Clare’s next surgeries are scheduled to occur once she reaches two years into her recovery.