A TAVISTOCK woman who suffered an agonisingly painful aneurysm on her brain after being ‘passed from pillar to post’ by medics for two years is preparing to sue the NHS.

Tina Good visited both Abbey Surgery in Tavistock and Derriford Hospital in Plymouth dozens of times but no one picked up on a serious infection which had spread from her face into her body.

The 64-year-old mother of three first went to the GP practice with swelling and huge red marks around her nose in August 2023, having started to feel really unwell the previous month.

She was told she had eczema.

When she returned to the surgery in November that year, her face swollen and red lesions around her nose and eyes, she was given antibiotics and a swab was taken.

That swab revealed an abnormal Staphylococcus aureus infection which should have seen her treated stronger antibiotics administered straight into the veins (intravenously – IV).

However, Tina says she wasn’t contacted by the surgery.

It wasn’t until February 2024 that Tina was told by the assessment unit at Derriford Hospital that she had abnormal Staphylococcus aureus infection.

Even then, alarms bells weren’t triggered, because her repeated high blood pressure readings, another indicator, had not been entered into her medical records by Abbey Surgery.

Tina says that her condition deteriorated throughout 2024 and she was ‘going backwards and forwards’ between the GP and Derriford Hospital.

“One Saturday afternoon my eyesight went,” she said. "I could only see half my grandson. We rang the NHS ‘111’ line and a doctor rang me back. I got sent to A&E and I got sent home. They said I had eczema.

“In December 2024 I got worse and I went to the pharmacist. My blood pressure reading was 195/103 and his exact words were ‘you’ve got onset of sepsis, you need to go to hospital, go straight to the GPs now.”

She was vomiting bile, lost her eyesight in her right eye and went back to A&E several times but says she was turned away.

Then at home in Tavistock on February 12, 2025, Tina woke up in agony in the night.

“I have had headaches before, but not like this,” she said. “I was in agony. I called an ambulance. The pain was so bad I ran a bath and held my head under the water.”

An ambulance crew came out, but said the headache was due to a sinus infection and advised taking strong painkillers. They did not take her to hospital.

Tina was back in A&E at Derriford in pain on March 9 with pain and symptoms, when she was finally given a headscan after “screaming and shouting” that she’d had an aneurysm.

A few days later she was phoned by the hospital who confirmed that she had had a brain aneurysm, which is where blood clots form in the arteries in the brain. This is serious because if it ruptures, the bleeding in the brain can cause death.

An investigation into Tina’s case is now being conducted by the Patient Advisory Liaison Service (PALS) at Derriford Hospital.

She says that Abbey Surgery has admitted it made a mistake in not entering her blood pressure readings.

For Tina, though, it is a case of too little, too late. She is seeking a second opinion at a hospital in London.

“I have lost faith in my GP and I have lost faith in the hospital,” she says. “All of this has traumatised me. It has aged me so fast and I was so healthy before, fit as a fiddle. I have lost half my hair. Nobody thought it could be Staphylococcus aureus. They just kept saying it is eczema or dermatitis.”

Staphylococcus aureus can lead to a bacterial infection called cellulitis, which if left untreated can enter the bloodstream and become life-threatening. This can cause blood clots and swollen blood vessels, leading to an aneurysm.

This is what Tina believes happened to her.

“What they should have done at that point was sent me to someone who was a specialist in Staphylococcus aureus and they should have done a biopsy [examine a small sample of tissue under a microscope]. They should have had me monitored,” she says. “Instead, I was passed from pillar to post and I was not treated.

“You have only got to look at my pictures to see that it is cellulitis,” she added. “The infection was in a deeper level of my tissue which went into my eyes which led to vision problems for me and life-threatening complications.

“They’ve caused me to have an aneurysm because they did not treat me. That was negligence. I can’t put it into words, the trauma it has caused me.”

Abbey Surgery said the practice could not comment on individual cases.

Darryn Allcorn, chief nurse and director of integrated professions at University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust, said: “We are very sorry for any patients who experience care in our hospitals that do not meet their expectations. We encourage anyone who is not happy with the standards of care they have received to contact our PALS team. We have been in regular contact with Miss Good and are investigating her complaints.”