General News
25 June, 2025
Unknown illness leaves family waiting for answers
A COBDEN teenager has been battling with an unknown blood disorder for over a year, sparking her mother to call out for greater support from the public health system.
For the past year, Ella Arndell, 18, has been struggling with excessive bleeding from her mouth, nose and eyes.
She said she started throwing up blood on the morning of June 18 last year after staying home from school due to not feeling well.
“I was spewing normal spew at first – they thought maybe I ruptured something for it to be blood after,” Ella said.
“I got some antibiotics to help with it but it kept going the next day.
“Then I went and had a camera down into my stomach and my tissues are really friable in my tummy, so they put clips and stuff in.
“The antibiotics didn’t change anything.
“I still kept bleeding, for weeks, then I started coughing up blood clots, then bad blood noses, then blood out of my eyes.”
Despite multiple tests being done, the condition Ella has which has been causing her to bleed from her eyes, nose, and cough up blood remains unknown.
“I’ve had cameras down in my lungs, up my nose, I’ve had a pill cam, I’ve had heaps of MRIs, heaps of CTs, so many tests, and – nothing,” Ella said.
“Everything comes back normal, but I’m bleeding every day.”
Exasperated by the lack of answers, Ella’s mum, Lisa Arndell, made a post on social media to raise awareness for people like Ella who have conditions which go undiagnosed and swept under the rug due to their complex nature.
The social media post has been shared more than 250 times, which included graphic video and images showing the extent of the blood loss which Western District Newspapers has chosen to withhold from publication due to their severity.
“When we talk to nurses at the hospital they tell us, ‘Don’t stop, keep on ringing them, keep on going in there, keep on presenting Ella with this,’ but Ella’s gotten to the point where she doesn’t want to go to the hospital anymore,” she said.
“It’s a waste of our time – it’s a waste of me taking work off to run Ella to the hospital.
“They say if she starts bleeding to take her straight to hospital, or they say drive down to Melbourne or Geelong.
“Do they know where we live? We financially can’t do that.
“Mentally and physically it’s a strain on not just me and Ella but our whole family.”
Ella’s condition is sporadic and unpredictable, sometimes causing pain and sometimes rendering her unaware she’s even bleeding at all.
“In the mornings it’s horrible and I’ll wake up in the morning spewing blood in the kitchen sink or blood pouring out of my eyes,” she said.
“That’s what happens the most – I always have blood out of my eyes, all the time.
“It’s not the same pain all the time.
“Sometimes it stings or burns, then other times it feels like I’m crying and I don’t even notice it.”
Not only has Ella missed out on school, having not attended for the past two weeks, but she is missing out on work and time with her friends.
“I can’t go out with my friends. I just turned 18,” she said.
“It feels like I can’t do anything. It’s just annoying.
“We’ll go to the hospital or something when it’s really bad and they’ll say they can’t do anything and send us home.”
Mrs Arndell said she felt like they were constantly waiting to hear from the next specialist or do a new test.
“Ella had bloods done down at the Royal Children’s to do genetic testing back in early April,” she said.
“She sees a haematologist in Geelong every month and we were ringing him asking him for the results trying to see what was happening.
“We received a call randomly from a haematologist from the Royal Children’s, they’re thinking Ella has HHT (hereditary haemorrhagic telangiectasia), which is a blood disorder, but they’re not entirely sure.
“Now Ella’s getting a referral to the Melbourne private hospital and her blood is still in the freezer at the Royal Children’s so they’ll test it but we don’t know how long the referral will take.
“The referral for us to go to the Royal Children’s we got back in August and they only saw us in April, but it takes so long for them to do it, and what do we do in the meantime?”
With the time between appointments stretching and hospital visits not helping, Mrs Arndell said it was like they were in a state of “limbo”.
“Even the haematologist said to me he’s got other doctors on the case as well, and in his words, they’re throwing Ella into the ‘too hard’ basket,” she said.
“It’s too hard and no one knows what’s going on.
“It’s frustrating because they go home and live their lives but we’re still stuck in limbo.
“I’m sure there’s plenty of people out there in the same boat as us and it’s frustrating as a parent to watch your daughter go through this.”
Mrs Arndell said she had been told to present Ella to local hospitals when she starts bleeding, which is almost every day, but they are unable to help her.
“Last time I rang the hospital and I said my husband’s bringing Ella in, she’s under a haematologist in Geelong, and this is what medication she’s on and stuff like that,” she said.
“I have to tell them what to do with her.
“I get that those doctors in Colac probably don’t specialise in people like Ella, but those people that do are putting us on the backburner all the time.”
For now, Ella is waiting for the next blood test result, and Mrs Arndell said she is hoping raising awareness for conditions like Ella’s will encourage change in the system to improve care for unknown medical conditions.
Ella said she just wants to be taken seriously by medical staff when she presents to hospital.
“It’s annoying because it feels like they don’t take it seriously. They just find it strange,” she said.
“I have to live through this and I have to deal with it.
“They see me show up and they don’t know what to do so they’re like, ‘Bye’ and it feels like nobody is giving me the chance to actually look further into it.
“They just say they don’t know.”
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