Two-Year Health Battle After Birth Nearly Killed Her

For two years, Danielle Bryce’s body felt like it was “slowly failing.” The 44-year-old author and law student from Doncaster endured night sweats, dizziness, and breathlessness after giving birth to her youngest child via C-section—a delivery that involved heavy blood loss. Despite multiple visits to her GP, she says doctors repeatedly attributed her symptoms to perimenopause or a hormonal imbalance. It took a near-fatal uterine haemorrhage in February 2026 to finally uncover the truth: severe anaemia.

“I think it’s so easy as women, especially when you get male GPs that don’t understand how this feels, just to be dismissed,” Bryce told: “I ended up back in hospital with pain a couple of weeks ago because my body’s just really struggling at the moment and I just felt very dismissed. ‘Do you want some antidepressants?’ No, I don’t. They treat you like you’re losing your mind but actually this is very real and this could have been avoided.”

Sudden Collapse and Emergency Surgery

The turning point came when Bryce suddenly felt “very unwell” while meeting her eldest daughter for lunch. She collapsed at home due to a uterine haemorrhage. “My partner ran in panicking, there was just blood everywhere, clots the size of my head,” she said. “I was rushed to hospital and the bleeding wouldn’t stop. I was bleeding through the pads they gave me, it was constant, like a tap.”

Doctors initially tried to manage the bleeding and scheduled surgery for the following week, but her condition worsened. “I had been calling the ward every day to try and go back in, I was saying ‘something is wrong’ but they just told me they had no space,” Bryce recounted. “I required two ambulances due to the severity of my symptoms, including extreme dizziness and fatigue. I was eventually rushed in to have the surgery on my uterus on Saturday night instead.”

She believes the situation could have been handled sooner. “Rather than trying to stabilise my blood loss in the hospital, why not operate? Why continue to leave me bleeding? I think a lot of this could have been avoided had they admitted me quicker—because I’m not just left with anemia, I now have vestibular neuritis which is crippling when I’m autistic and I have sensory issues, and the room is spinning. It’s paralysed me, essentially. I’ve been in bed on and off for weeks.”

Diagnosis and Secondary Condition

After surgery, Bryce was diagnosed with severe anaemia—a condition where the body lacks enough healthy red blood cells to carry oxygen. Her haemoglobin levels were borderline for needing a blood transfusion. “Due to the risks, doctors opted to treat me with an iron infusion instead,” she said. “While this has helped, recovery has been slow and difficult, especially while caring for my children.”

She is now also battling vestibular neuritis, an inner ear condition that causes severe dizziness, nausea, and balance issues. “I’ve since had to seek private treatment with an ENT specialist, where I was diagnosed with vestibular neuritis,” she said. “I was told this was likely triggered by the physical trauma my body went through, including the blood loss and resulting anaemia.”

Pattern of Dismissal

Bryce says the most frustrating part was not being taken seriously. “I was repeatedly told my symptoms were likely hormonal, and I don’t feel my concerns were taken seriously early enough,” she said. “This isn’t the first time I’ve experienced this; I was also diagnosed later in life with autism and ADHD, after years of being treated for anxiety and depression. I do feel that women’s health concerns can often be overlooked or minimised. It’s too easy for serious symptoms to be attributed to hormones or stress, and that can delay proper diagnosis and treatment.”

Now recovering, she takes vitamins, magnesium, iron, and omega-3, but the impact on her life remains severe. “I was given a range of different medications for the vestibular neuritis; anti-nausea, anti-dizziness, anti-anxiety tablets, it was too much,” she said. “They’re too quick to push tablets on to women, it’s preventing proper care. I don’t want to be filled with tablets that aren’t working and have severe side effects. I can’t even drive at the minute due to the vestibular neuritis; this is something that isn’t going to change overnight, it’s something that I’ll have to continue to navigate.”

“This has had a huge impact on my day-to-day life,” Bryce added. “The dizziness and vertigo have been debilitating at times, and I’m now navigating recovery from both anaemia and a vestibular condition caused by the effects simultaneously, while also raising my children. This experience has completely changed how I view my health and how important it is to be listened to. [I want] to raise awareness so that other women feel empowered to push for answers and not ignore persistent symptoms.”