When Emilie Cullum vomited shortly after finishing her normal morning bowl of cereal, she blamed it on the milk going off.
That was a reasonable immediate explanation, but when her sickness continued over the next 10 days – and she struggled to keep meals down – the 36-year-old, from St Albans, Hertfordshire, knew something more serious was going on.
Ms Cullum said: ‘I ate breakfast and was really sick but didn’t feel ill, didn’t have a temperature or anything like that so thought maybe the milk was off, then had dinner and was sick again.
‘Because I had been so violently sick for days, I thought then I had broken my rib being sick.’
After visiting A&E, the mother-of-three was told she was suffering with Crohn’s disease – an incurable condition that causes inflammation of the gut and can lead to sickness and nausea.
But Ms Cullum continued to suffer.
After three months of the same symptoms plaguing her daily life, leaving her unable to eat meals with her family, the aesthetic clinician booked a private consultation with a specialist in February 2025.
There, she received the devastating news that she had gastroparesis – a rare condition in which the stomach cannot empty food properly, causing it to pass through the digestive system far more slowly than normal.
The 36-year-old is now facing the prospect of dying after a dramatic weight loss
Around 14 in every 100,000 Britons suffer from some form of the condition, which can leave its victims bloated, feeling full after a few bites of a meal and doubled over with stomach pain.
But in Ms Cullum’s case the symptoms of the illness were so severe that it triggered drastic weight loss which saw her weight almost halve from 8st 5lb to 4st 8lb.
She now faces the prospect of dying within a year and says ‘the thought of having to leave my children is horrific’ and ‘unthinkable’.
Ms Cullum says the specialist told her that the pain was coming from her abdomen, where gastroparesis takes hold because the nerves responsible for telling the stomach to empty are not as effective.
In the mother-of-three’s case, she was told that her ‘stomach is completely broken’ and that ‘nothing is going through’.
It means she feels full all the time and cannot keep food down, leading to rapid weight loss.
Ms Cullum said: ‘It was fine because I just thought they could fix it but then I was losing more and more weight and people were commenting.
‘While I was in hospital they scanned me and they said if I don’t get some weight on me, essentially I’m “forced” anorexic, so I probably haven’t got much longer than a year.’
Ms Cullum has since managed to increase her weight to just over 5st after undergoing a jejunostomy, a procedure that allows feeding directly into the small intestine through a tube.
But she remains ‘critically underweight’ according to her friend’s GoFundMe, which has been launched to help raise £200,000 for private total parenteral nutrition (TPN) treatment, which would deliver nutrients directly into her bloodstream.
Emilie Cullum (left) vomited after eating a bowl of cereal in November 2024 and has been diagnosed with gastroparesis
Ms Cullum’s weight has almost halved from 8st 5lb to 4st 8lb
Ms Cullum wants to receive private treatment at her home to spend more time with her family
The fundraiser reads: ‘She can come home with a private nurse meaning she gets to be with her family, most importantly her young children as they struggle through their GCSEs because their mother is starving to death.
‘Her life expectancy is going to be considerably shorter if she can’t have this done, so this is her last hope to be around for as long as possible for her gorgeous children.’
To qualify for the treatment, she needs to reach 6st 9lb – a target she is hoping to reach through her current treatment in residential hospital care, where she receives fluids, nutrition and medication directly into her veins through a Hickman line and a PICC line.
But the extended hospital stays mean long periods away from her husband, Kyle, 41, a golf teacher, and their three children.
Ms Cullum said: ‘It’s hard, the children are growing up and we thought we were going to have all these years, we did it young and it’s just not worked out that way.
‘I don’t want to go into hospital knowing that I don’t have that much time left and not spending it with my family.
‘I have been in hospital for pretty much a year, it is quite mentally hard to sit on a ward.’
