Faye's Voice History Matters Campaign
Support Faye’s Law – History Matters
See the History • Connect the Pattern • Question the Label • Protect the Vulnerable
My name is Faye Rebecca Cunningham.
I was born prematurely in 1995.
From the very beginning, my medical history was complicated.
As a baby and young child, I experienced illness, seizures, hospital admissions and repeated medical care. As I grew older, there were more symptoms, more appointments, more investigations and more pieces added to my medical history.
There were rashes.
Nosebleeds.
Seizures.
Infections and episodes of illness.
Learning and memory difficulties.
Neurological symptoms.
Abnormal blood results.
Blood-pressure readings that became increasingly important.
Renal findings.
Different referrals, different hospitals, different specialists and different explanations.
Individually, some of those things may have looked small.
But I wasn't a collection of separate appointments.
I was one patient.
And my history mattered.
I needed somebody to see the whole of me
Over my 27 years, information about my health accumulated across different parts of the NHS.
Some clinicians investigated individual problems and tried to help me.
But my records also contain unfinished pathways, repeated abnormalities, unsuccessful referrals, conflicting information and questions about whether important parts of my history were consistently connected when later decisions were made.
My family has spent years putting that history back together.
Not because every appointment was wrong.
Not because every symptom had to have one cause.
But because somebody needed to ask:
Was anyone seeing the whole patient?
Were patterns being noticed?
Were previous findings being reconsidered when something new happened?
Did one service know what another service had already discovered?
When an investigation was requested, who made sure it was completed?
When I struggled with memory and communication, was the healthcare system adapted to help me navigate it?
When something remained unexplained, who owned the next step?
Those questions are at the heart of Faye’s Law – History Matters.
My blood pressure was more than “just white coat”
As a young woman, I had repeated high blood-pressure readings.
In 2019, cardiology recorded readings including 184/114, 165/105 and 170/100.
Further investigation took place.
My records later described me as having a degree of hypertension together with a significant white-coat component.
That distinction matters.
My family is not claiming that hypertension alone explains everything that happened to me.
Independent experts still need to determine what role my hypertension played in my later vascular disease and whether different treatment or follow-up could have altered my risk.
But what my case shows is why a label such as “white coat” must never become the end of the story when objective evidence shows there is more to investigate.
My memory difficulties mattered too
I had memory and learning difficulties before my major hospital admission in 2021.
After that admission, formal cognitive testing recorded an ACE-III score of 48/100.
That was not simply me saying I was forgetful.
It was objective evidence of serious cognitive difficulty.
Once a patient is known to have major difficulties with memory, communication or navigating healthcare, the system should ask:
Can this person reliably manage appointments alone?
Will telephone-only contact work?
Should a family member or advocate be involved?
Should a missed call or appointment be treated differently?
Does somebody need to make sure the next step actually happens?
A vulnerable patient should not disappear from a healthcare pathway simply because the system expected them to navigate it without enough support.
Some of my investigations never reached the end of the pathway
In 2022, imaging identified an abnormal area in my brain.
A multidisciplinary team recommended further CT imaging.
That follow-up CT was not completed before I died.
My family does not claim that this scan definitely would have found the aneurysm that later ruptured.
That question requires specialist neuroradiological opinion.
But the wider issue remains important:
An investigation had been recommended.
The pathway remained unfinished.
Faye’s Law asks that significant investigations work as a closed loop:
Requested → Completed → Result → Reviewed → Action → Follow-up → Clinically closed
A patient should not simply fall out somewhere in the middle.
My kidneys are another example of why history matters
Later imaging documented bilateral renal scarring.
My family has also identified renal and urinary findings earlier in my life that are still being reconstructed from old and sometimes handwritten records.
Independent specialists will need to determine whether those findings were related, what caused the scarring and whether there was any relationship with my hypertension.
That medical causation must not be guessed.
But the safety lesson does not depend on guessing it.
When a patient develops an important structural finding later in life, clinicians should be able to see the relevant earlier history and ask:
Has this happened before?
Is this part of a longer pattern?
Does it change what we thought we knew?
On my final night, I became critically ill
On 28 July 2022 I suffered seizures and a catastrophic neurological emergency.
Hospital records document a very low level of consciousness, abnormal neurological signs and deterioration requiring emergency airway management and transfer for neurosurgical care.
My mum was beside me.
She has her own direct memories of what she saw and heard that night, including concerns about monitoring, oxygen, an airway procedure and significant bleeding.
The hospital records contain their own account.
Where those two evidence streams do not presently match, my family is asking for the underlying records, device logs and audit trails so the truth can be independently established.
That is different from accusing somebody of deliberately falsifying records.
It means:
show us the evidence underneath the electronic entry.
My family has also learned that records can contain different versions of the same story
During their investigation they have found:
different discharge wording,
different administrative entries,
unfinished referrals,
electronic fields that do not always fit the surrounding clinical record,
and important information scattered between organisations.
A discrepancy does not automatically mean wrongdoing.
But discrepancies matter.
They should be traceable.
Healthcare records should allow patients, families, clinicians, investigators and Coroners to understand:
what happened, when it happened, who recorded it and what source produced the information.
This is why my family is asking for Faye’s Law
Faye’s Law is not asking doctors to read hundreds of pages before every consultation.
It is asking for a safer system that makes the important history visible when it matters.
We are asking for:
Longitudinal History Review
Repeated, unexplained, chronic or escalating presentations should trigger meaningful review of relevant previous history.
Persistent Abnormality Safety Net
Repeated clinically significant abnormalities should not simply become accepted as “normal for this patient” without documented consideration of why they persist.
Diagnostic Label Review Trigger
When new objective evidence appears, labels such as anxiety, functional symptoms, white-coat effect or other explanations materially influencing care should be reconsidered where appropriate.
Different Symptoms Can Still Form a Pattern
Healthcare systems should help clinicians identify clinically relevant relationships across years and specialties rather than seeing every presentation in isolation.
A Vulnerable Patient Safety Net
Patients whose memory, cognition, communication or disability makes healthcare difficult to navigate should receive appropriate adjustments and follow-up support.
Family and Advocate Information
Where lawful and appropriate, clinically relevant information from relatives, carers and advocates should be recorded and considered.
Someone Must Own the Next Step
A significant referral or investigation should have a clearly identifiable responsible clinician or team until the pathway is safely completed or clinically closed.
Closed-Loop Investigations
Requested → completed → result → reviewed → patient informed → action taken → follow-up arranged.
One Connected Health Story
Relevant information should follow the patient across GP practices, hospitals, specialties and the transition from childhood to adult care.
Childhood History Must Not Disappear
Important childhood medical history should remain discoverable when it becomes clinically relevant in adulthood.
Technology Must Show Its Working
Digital systems may help identify patterns, but alerts, observations and generated summaries should remain traceable to their underlying source.
A Fair Route for Historic and Lifelong Cases
Families should not be prevented from having later-discovered evidence considered simply because part of a continuing healthcare history falls outside an arbitrary historic boundary.
Faye’s Law is not about blaming every clinician
There were people who tried to help me.
There were investigations.
There were treatments.
And there were clinicians who recognised important problems.
This campaign is about something bigger.
It is about what happens between appointments.
Between hospitals.
Between childhood and adulthood.
Between one specialist and another.
Between a test being requested and somebody making sure it is completed.
Between a patient being labelled and somebody later asking whether the evidence still fits that label.
A healthcare system can contain good people and still have dangerous gaps.
Faye’s Law is about closing those gaps.
My story did not begin on the night I died
I was 27 when I died following a catastrophic aneurysmal brain haemorrhage.
But my medical story did not begin at 27.
It began at birth.
That is why my family refuses to tell only the final chapter.
Every little entry matters.
Every blood test matters.
Every blood-pressure reading matters.
Every referral matters.
Every scan matters.
Every medication matters.
Every letter matters.
Every time I attended for help matters.
Every time my family tried to explain something matters.
Not because each one proves somebody did something wrong.
But because together they form my history.
And you cannot understand a patient properly if you keep throwing their history away.
History Matters
SEE THE HISTORY.
CONNECT THE PATTERN.
QUESTION THE LABEL.
PROTECT THE VULNERABLE.
MAKE SOMEONE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE NEXT STEP.
Because a patient is more than today's appointment.
My name was Faye Rebecca Cunningham.
I was somebody's daughter.
I was somebody's sister.
I was loved.
I mattered.
And so did my history.
Please sign and share Faye’s Law – History Matters so another patient does not have to spend years carrying pieces of a medical story that nobody ever puts together.
Together, we can make history matter. Together We've got This 💜🦋