A newly married couple were unable to enjoy their wedding night after the bride sustained an 'injury' that left her 'hours' away from losing her life.
Sarah Wintrip, 38, noticed a pain in her groin during the flight to Jamaica to marry partner Luke Wintrip, 36, earlier this month.
She didn't think much of it and her friend apparently reassured her it could have simply been a 'gym injury'.
The wedding went ahead as normal despite the mom-of-three being 'uncomfortable' - a feeling she ignored to stop her guests from suspecting anything out of the ordinary.
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As well as being unable to have her first dance with Luke, Sarah experienced 'huge amounts of pain' during her wedding night.
However, her health deteriorated after she flew back home to the UK on May 20, as she was rushed to hospital by paramedics who met her off the plane.
It was there that doctors found a 'huge' cyst in Sarah's groin which had exploded during the flight and turned septic, so she had 'life-saving' surgery to remove it.
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The woman, who lives in Essex, UK, now has an open wound in her groin while doctors wait for the abscess to heal.
Sarah said: "I would never have expected this to happen on my wedding day. We've still not consummated the wedding. We've really tested the wedding vows in sickness and health.
"We were on the plane flying over and I felt this pull in my groin. It felt like I'd been in the gym and I'd been doing lunges and I'd lunged a little bit too hard.
"My friend who's a personal trainer said 'Have you been in the gym?' I laughed and said 'I haven't stepped inside a gym for seven months; it's definitely not that'. In my gut I knew something wasn't right."
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Sarah stayed up on the night that followed her wedding to watch the sunrise with her friends, but became immediately concerned once she spotted a 'visible lump' that became 'hot to touch'.
"I was waking up in the middle of the night in huge amounts of pain. I was having fever dreams and was delirious," she added.
The marketing chief executive had an ultrasound and a CT scan when she was admitted to hospital, where the potentially fatal cyst was discovered.
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She continued: "I knew that if I went into a Jamaican hospital I'd die in a Jamaican hospital. I wanted to see my children again. I knew something was really bad and I was trying to hide it from my friends.
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"In my head I was thinking 'I just need to get on that flight and get back to England'. I told everyone I felt really sick and everyone thought I was just hungover.
"[On the flight] I woke up an hour before we landed in excruciating pain. I think there was an abscess and a cyst had grown in the abscess and it had a casing round it. It started to go bad and the air pressure had made it explode.
"One of my friends by pure luck had antibiotics. I was two hours from death and if she hadn't given me those antibiotics, I would've died."
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Sarah has since urged others to 'go with their gut' and get checked out if they feel something may be wrong.
She admitted: "It's been very tearful. You get married thinking 'I've got years and years to spend my life with you'. When something like that happens it's a jolt to reality.
"Go with your gut because my gut the whole time was saying 'go back to England'. Knowing now how rare it is and how difficult it was to figure out I was right, I would've died in Jamaica.
"Do not delay. I had no choice because I had to go back to England. But if there's something up and there's something you're worried about, just get it looked at, don't sit on it. You know your own body."
Topics: Weddings, Sex and Relationships
Callum Jones