Life Changing

When Trevor Yellon’s partner Drew was diagnosed with cancer they fought the illness together. After all, Trevor was a doctor. He was uniquely equipped to deal it. But the strain on Trevor grew more and more intense.

After a series of medical emergencies, Drew collapsed on the stairs and was rushed to hospital. Trevor realised he wasn’t coping. He phoned his stepmother. What he heard from her changed everything.

Trevor tells his powerful story to Life Changing’s Dr Sian Williams.

Producer: Tom Alban

Laurie Peake loved the outdoors, provided it involved speed. She had discovered a passion for skiing in Canada, and back home in England she loved water-skiing, dancing and motorbiking. That is, until a serious motorbike crash on a wintry day in the 1980s changed everything.

Rushed to hospital, it looked as if Laurie would lose her lower leg. But a pioneering orthopaedic team thought otherwise, maintaining there was still hope. In a long battle which involved a technique only ever tried behind the iron curtain, they fought against the odds to save her leg.

Laurie tells Dr Sian Williams how, during the process, she discovered a passion for art and art history – and reveals whether the experimental Ilizarov technique really worked.

Producer: Tom Alban

Anna Bailey had lived a busy life. An IT professional, cat breeder and national cat show judge, she was also prone to bouts of depression. But approaching her 50th birthday, she ruled out self-pity and decided that it was time to get back into shape.

A trip to a local gym seemed unremarkable enough, until she tried out the rowing machine. She was quite good at it - so good in fact, that within a year she would be travelling overseas representing her country in competitive indoor rowing competitions. Within two years she was age-group World Champion.

Producer: Tom Alban

Growing up in a military family, it was no surprise when Rob Bugden decided to join the RAF. Despite professing that he had no head for heights, he trained to become a parachute instructor – eager to face his fears head-on.

Setting off for a routine training jump one fateful day, he had no idea that a terrifying mid-air collision would send him hurtling 900ft to the ground. Miraculously, Rob survived – but with life-changing injuries.

Armed with a fantastic family and RAF colleagues, a stubborn streak a mile wide, and an infectious sense of humour, he is facing that challenge inch by inch.

Rob talks to Dr Sian Williams about adapting to a new normal and still holding firm to the values and character that make him special.

Producer: Tom Alban

Growing up, Karine Burns always knew she was adopted, and that her mother had been sent over to the UK from Ireland.

Karine had a joyous childhood, loved dearly by her Scottish parents. But after the arrival of her first child, she started to think seriously about her birth mother - about how hard it must have been to give a baby up for adoption, so far from home.

Her mammoth 20-year search for her birth parents involved passionate appeals, detective work and rejection - until a breakthrough changed everything, just in the nick of time…

Karine tells her incredible story to Life Changing’s Dr Sian Williams.

Producer: Tom Alban.

In an interview recorded before the recent conflict between Israel, the USA and Iran, but after the reprisals following the public protests against the Islamic Republic of Iran, Dr Sian Williams talks to 19 year-old Rozhan about her flight from Tehran and subsequent journey to the UK.

At just 16, Rozhan's life changed forever when the Iranian authorities discovered that her mother was attending an underground Christian church – and her immediate family felt they had no choice but to flee for their lives.

Rozhan tells Dr Sian Williams about the heartbreak of abandoning her old life, and her terrifying journey across Europe - which almost ended in disaster aboard a terrifying small boat.

Rozhan, her sister and mother have now been granted leave to remain in the UK, and like any teenager, she is trying to pass her exams and build a new life in a land that has given her life and freedom. But the agony of watching those she has left behind, both family and friends, remains.

Producer: Tom Alban

In the first programme of a new series of Life Changing, Emma Webber, whose son Barnaby was killed in the 2023 Nottingham attack, talks with openness and candour about the very personal anguish at the heart of this very public story.

Barnaby, fellow student Grace O'Malley Kumar and school caretaker Ian Coates were all victims of killer Valdo Calocane, a man who was known to be violent and who had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

In a break from campaigning for an inquiry into Barnaby’s death, Emma takes Dr Sian Williams inside the whirlwind that engulfed her and her family, the little gestures by members of the public in Nottingham that meant so much, and the gradual realisation that she did have the strength to challenge the system that had failed to keep her son safe.

Producer: Tom Alban

As a young man, engineer Michael Ashcroft was plagued by excruciating headaches, along with neck pain and a rushing sound in his ear. Eventually scans were made revealing a tumour the size of a tangerine behind his left ear. It required twelve hours of complex surgery and left Michael with temporary deafness in one ear, a lopsided face, limited swallowing and barely any capacity for speech. Seeing his face reflected in a hospital window he was appalled and at the same time profoundly moved. Half his face was in daylight, the handsome young man who had entered the hospital a few days before. The other half, in shade, looked to him like a monster. In an instant he had an overwhelming desire to capture that image, and to do that he would become a painter – drawing comparisons to the industrial artistic genius of L.S. Lowry.

Michael talks to Dr Sian Williams about the challenges of recovery, and describes his determination to teach himself to paint.

Producer: Tom Alban

When Jess Martinez was just thirteen, she was sexually abused by her sister's much older boyfriend. No charges were brought at the time, but the impact it had on Jess's life was dramatic, causing lasting damage. Many years later, when Jess discovered her abuser had been jailed for another case of child abuse, she took the courageous decision to tell her own story, waiving her right to lifelong anonymity.

Producer; Tom Alban

When highly experienced caver George Linanne fell during an expedition in the massive Ogof Ffynnon Ddu cave system in Wales , he wondered whether he would ever reach the surface. With a leg broken in two places, and multiple injuries to his jaw, collar-bone, chest and internal organs, he was in excruciating pain. Some 300 cavers from across the UK took part in what became one of the longest cave rescues in UK history. George tells Dr Sian Williams about his accident, his incredible escape and why he is back caving - the sport he loves - as well as becoming a cave rescuer himself.

Producer: Tom Alban