A 32-year-old model has told how she became legally blind after doctors missed her sight-robbing condition.
Hazal Baybasin claims she was made to feel like a ‘drama queen’ and shared that she may have had a ‘low tolerance for pain’ when she complained of terrible headaches on the phone.
Days later, she went to the ER, where a CT scan was done showed that her brain was “absolutely fine.” Miss Baybasin was sent home with co-codamol.
Minutes after she got home, she collapsed on the sofa and was found by her mother and brother, who immediately called an ambulance.
Miss Baybasin was admitted to Northwick Park Hospital in Harrow, London, where she was diagnosed with intracranial hypertension – a build-up of pressure around the brain.
Hazal Baybasin went to Barnet Hospital A&E on March 31, 2019 – where she claims medics said a CN scan showed her brain was ‘absolutely fine’
Minutes after returning home, Miss Baybasin collapsed on the couch and was found by her mother and brother, who immediately called an ambulance
She was admitted to Northwick Park Hospital, where she was diagnosed with idiopathic intracranial hypertension – a buildup of pressure around the brain. Nine days after arriving in Northwick, she became completely blind
Nine days after arriving at the hospital, she completely lost her sight and described her horrific ordeal as “the most frightened I had ever been in my life.”
After she was transferred to Charing Cross Hospital, doctors managed to regain some of her sight, but she was left with ‘tunnel vision’ and was registered legally blind.
Miss Baybasin, from Edgeware, London, claimed that medics who saved part of her sight said her blindness was preventable if she had been seen by them before.
Miss Baybasin describes her experience now, four years later, saying that in March 2019 she started experiencing headaches that lasted for three months.
She claims her GP at Lane End Medical Practice dismissed these as migraines and told her she had a “low pain threshold.”
The saleswoman, then 28, said she felt like her life was “falling apart” as she could barely sleep or eat, and was drawn to meetings because she missed targets and snapped at colleagues.
She said, “When I called the doctor, they pushed it aside as a migraine.
“I’d never really had a migraine before, and the doctor told me it was just an extreme headache and maybe I just have a low tolerance for pain.
“I felt like I was going to be a drama queen if I kept saying I was in pain afterwards.”
But a colleague later told her, “Hazal, I don’t care what your GP told you over the phone, this isn’t a migraine.”
Miss Baybasin, who has since founded an accessible skincare brand called BlindBeauty, went to Barnet Hospital’s A&E, where she underwent a CT scan.
She walked because she felt she couldn’t drive with the pain.
But she claims she was told her brain was “absolutely fine” and doctors sent her away with co-codamol.
Shortly after returning home by taxi, Miss Baybasin collapsed and was taken to Northwick Park Hospital.
Miss Baybasin was admitted to hospital and medics later discovered three large clots in her brain, which spread down her neck. Clots can cause intracranial hypertension.
She was then transferred to intensive care a week after arrival, where her condition worsened. Just 48 hours after being transferred to ICU, she had completely lost her sight.
Miss Baybasin said, ‘My sight literally went overnight. My family was in the room with me and I asked them to turn on the lights and they said they were on.
“Then I got a really cold feeling and was like ‘F***, it’s not just blurry, it’s dark now.’ At that point it had become pitch dark, so I couldn’t see anything at all.’
She claims her GP at Lane End Medical Practice dismissed these as migraines and told her she had ‘low pain tolerance’
Miss Baybasin went to Barnet Hospital A&E, forced to walk as she felt she could not drive from the pain, where she underwent a CT scan
Miss Baybasin was admitted to hospital and medics later discovered three large clots in her brain, which spread down her neck
She claims specialists said the only way to regain her sight was a risky surgery that could leave her paralyzed.
But her brother wanted a second opinion and Miss Baybasin was transferred to Charing Cross Hospital, where medics said the procedure to regain her sight “would not be risky at all”.
Miss Baybasin said, ‘The neurologists [at Charing Cross] immediately knew what was going on. They didn’t sound scared or worried, they’d seen something like this before.’
Doctors performed a lumbar puncture – in which a thin needle is inserted between the bones in your lower back – and Miss Baybasin “immediately saw three flashes of light.”
This was repeated every other day and after about ten days a pinprick of tunnel vision returned in the middle. Miss Baybasin was subsequently admitted for neurosurgery.
She woke up in intensive care to the news that the tunnel vision was the only thing medics could fix for her sight. She is now registered as legally blind.
Miss Baybasin claims Charing Cross specialists had told her that her condition was preventable from the start if she had been taken seriously by doctors.
“They said it was a shame I wasn’t with them sooner because they could have kept more of my sight,” she said.
They said if [previous doctors] took me seriously, instead of telling me to take stronger painkillers it would have been picked up on and wouldn’t have happened at all. When I heard that, I got so angry then.’
After her surgery, Miss Baybasin spent a week in intensive care. She then spent three months there receiving daily physical therapy and training to adapt to her condition.
A spokesperson for the London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust told MailOnline: ‘We are sorry to hear of Ms Baybasin’s concerns and urge her to contact our complaints team so that we can investigate further.
‘Because of patient confidence, we cannot comment on individual cases, but we do work closely with specialized services from other hospitals in these types of complex cases.’
MailOnline approached Lane End Medical Practice and Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust (Barnet Hospital) for comment.