Jessica Jones
At her sickest, Erin Josephs was in a high-dependency hospital unit with severe abdominal pain, unable to eat or walk and scared she was going to die.
Then she read a Woman’s Weekly story about Grace Fordyce – who had vascular compression syndrome and travelled to Australia for surgery – and finally felt a glimmer of hope.
“It gave me some relief because I was like, ‘Wow, there’s actually a possibility I could get better,’” recalls Erin, 20, who, like Grace, desperately struggled to get diagnosed and recognised many similarities between their experiences. That was December last year.
Dismissed by medical staff
“My heart rate had dropped into the early forties,” she says. “I could hardly sit up in bed and I was just in constant pain.”
It was a frightening contrast to the life Erin had once known. At 16, she was a Taekwondo black belt, training up to six hours a day, hoping to make the national team.
But shortly before her 17th birthday in 2023, severe abdominal pain and nausea began striking every few months, landing her in hospital each time.
“The first time I went to hospital, they thought it was appendicitis,” she shares.
But Erin says when doctors couldn’t determine what was causing the pain, they suggested – after several admissions – she had an eating disorder.
“I was quite upset because I knew that I didn’t, and that the pain was real, but it felt like they dismissed it.”
Erin says a child psychologist disagreed with the diagnosis and eating disorder services declined her because she “didn’t meet the criteria for an eating disorder”.
But still no one could tell Erin what was happening to her.
Breaking point
By October 2024, things had become unbearable. She could barely eat, needed a feeding tube, and her left leg had turned purple, was constantly numb and had largely stopped working.
In June 2025, Erin was finally sent for an ultrasound and CT scan to see if she had vascular compression syndrome. The often-misunderstood condition can cause severe pain and restriction of blood flow through compressed blood vessels.
“It showed my left renal vein where it was compressed was two millimetres – it should be around 10 millimetres,” explains Erin.
Finally, it felt like she was getting somewhere. So Erin was shocked when her Marlborough specialist disagreed with the vascular compression syndrome diagnosis.
“He said it was a psychological thing – he just didn’t believe it,” she tells. “I was pretty confused, but I was also worried that I was going to die.”
Grace’s story
Desperate for a solution, she began looking overseas for answers. That’s when Grace’s story in the magazine became so important. Following in her footsteps, in May this year, Erin travelled to Canberra for surgery.
“I knew if I didn’t get surgery, I had no hope, so I felt like there was nothing to lose.”
Erin says during the two-hour operation, her compressed left renal vein was repositioned and surgeons discovered she also had superior mesenteric artery syndrome, a rare digestive condition in which part of the small intestine is pinched, blocking food from passing through. Both conditions were treated during the operation.
When Erin woke up, she says she was hungry for the first time in years.
“I woke up starving. I ate and drank, and there was no pain whatsoever and no nausea,” shares Erin, who will never forget that first meal of pancakes with berries.
After surgery, she was able to walk again and return to the gym. In July, Erin also restarted a pre-nursing course she had twice been forced to abandon because she was too sick.
A bright future
Throughout it all, Erin was sustained by her faith, her church community and one very special friend, Andras Kovacs, who was always by her side.
Several months before surgery, the pair began dating and are now excitedly planning their wedding.
“For the past two years, I was in hospital on my birthday. So he said he wanted to make my 20th one I’d never forget,” smiles Erin, recalling the moment Andras, also 20, proposed after dolphins swam by their favourite spot in the Marlborough Sounds.
Now, after years of agony, Erin can finally imagine a future. She will finish her pre-nursing course this month, marry in December, then move to Australia, where she plans to study nursing and midwifery.
“I have always wanted to be a nurse since I was little,” she says. “But when I was in hospital and none of the doctors or nurses would believe me, there was this one emergency room nurse who came to my bed and said, ‘Whatever happens, even if no one else does, I’ll always believe you.’ Now I want to be that person for someone else.”
