New doctor 'spurred to go into medicine' by rare condition

For years, Carys Havard experienced respiratory issues including breathing difficulties and fainting, but nobody knew what was causing her symptoms, which she was regularly accused of faking.

"I always knew deep down that there was something wrong, even if other people around me didn't," she said.

"I think that was what spurred me to go into medicine in the first place: 'I'll find out the answer, even if I have to do it myself.'"

Having now graduated from Keele University and qualified as a doctor, the 23-year-old has secured a role at the Cardiff hospital where she was diagnosed with a rare respiratory condition and underwent three surgeries, in what she describes as a "full-circle moment".

As a teenager, Havard competed as a swimmer at a national level but struggled with breathing difficulties and regularly fainted in the pool.

"I was repeatedly told it was asthma and, at times, people thought I was exaggerating or making it up, which was incredibly difficult and isolating."

In 2020, a diagnosis at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff "gave me answers", she said.

She was found to have laryngomalacia, which causes tissue to fold into the airway. 

"I was training for up to nine times a week and these symptoms affected me daily," Havard said.

"I really struggled with [them] and even my coaches, friends and healthcare professionals told me that I was faking my condition because it mimicked asthma but it wasn't quite asthma."

The swimmer added it was "very detrimental" as a teenager who wanted to progress in the sport "to be told that you're faking your condition because you're lazy".

"I would lose consciousness in the pool, but then I'd start breathing again and for someone who's such a confident swimmer to then have no control over their body and breathing in the pool was a very, very scary ordeal indeed."

The newly-qualified doctor, from Crickhowell, Powys, remembered one day she was in A&E with "everyone sort of... leaving me in the corner" and she was "wheezing and wheezing until I did collapse".

"Everyone sort of just said 'oh', rolled their eyes and there was this one doctor who said 'no, she turned blue'.

"They said 'no, this is dangerous, she's not getting any oxygen to her brain' and that was where the ball started rolling.

"I want to be like that doctor who understands how helpless a patient can be in that moment and I want to listen to everything that that patient says to me."

Havard, who wanted to be a doctor since the age of five, began her medical degree at Keele in 2021 and had surgery a few months into her first year.

After finding out she would be working in Cardiff after her graduation, she "burst into tears, and when I told my mum, she did too".

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