Sam Stamper, 22, said she never thought she would see the big day after spending a year in hospital after a cyst on her spleen sparked health problems four years ago.



She was not even able to suck an ice cube without vomiting and on one day she was sick 112 times.

But after an operation to drain the cyst of three pints of fluid, Sam made a quick recovery and got back to seven and a half stones in a few months.

Now she is a healthy eight stones, and returned to the fit person she was before.

Her boyfriend Edward Day, 26, proposed last October and the couple have set a date of November 15 for the wedding.

Today Sam told the Mail: "I have got my life back. I never thought I would get to this point.

"This is the light at the end of the tunnel. I'm more happy than I have ever been."

Sam is training to be a hairdresser with Bombshell Hair Design at the Arches in the town's Park Road with Mark Wadrop, who owns the shop.

After starting a law course at Leeds University, she changed her career plans after she took a year out and worked at the salon.

She said: "I thought 'I love this, I enjoy hairdressing, I'm not going back'."

Sam, of Thornton Street, Hartlepool, remembers how she was 18, and a student at Hartlepool Sixth Form College, when she started vomiting and thought she had a stomach bug.

After visiting her doctor, Sam was eventually admitted to the University Hospital of Hartlepool, where she stayed for a year.

Sam, whose mum Dawn, 43, lives in Middleton Road, Hartlepool, and dad, Billy, 44, lives in Friendship Lane on the Headland, said at one point doctors thought she would have bulimia.

She said: "I could not get out of bed without passing out. They could not get enough food into me without me being sick."

Sam, who has a brother Jonathan, 19, said the cyst was attached to her spleen and was putting pressure on her stomach and other organs.

When she was about to be operated on at the Freeman Hospital, in Newcastle, in August 2005, Sam was told that she had only a 50-50 chance of surviving the anaesthetic.

She said: "At that point I did not care, I just wanted it over.

"It felt in hospital that it was never going to end. I remember crying to my mum saying 'I'm never going to leave hospital'. I was convinced I would die there."

Five days after the operation, Sam had a piece of toast and was amazed when she was not sick.

After the operation some scar tissue did not heal properly and Sam was on morphine for two years.

During that time she met her husband-to-be, Edward, a taxi driver from Greenside Avenue, Peterlee, through a friend and they instantly hit it off.

She said: "To get married is my dream. It's a new beginning now."