'Doctors thought I needed vitamins - but I was being slowly poisoned in my own home'

Tracey Condron was a healthy and active 43-year-old grandma who loved nothing more than spending time with her family. But slowly, over the last five months of 2024, she found herself breathless, dizzy, and confused.

Her symptoms were unexplained by doctors, who suggested she may have vitamin deficiencies. But even with a kitchen cupboard full of supplements, she was taken home from work by her colleagues on several occasions after passing out.

Tracey, from Rainford, East London, thought she was losing her mind. “I genuinely just thought I'm going insane,” she told the Mirror. “I changed as a whole person. Even at work, I was being asked, What is going on with you? I thought I was just losing my want to live, to be honest.”

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The mum-of-three says she developed phantom smells, adding: “I genuinely thought I was on my way out, that I was dying.” Her daughter, Shelina Condron, 28, admitted that she and her siblings had also assumed their mother was terminally ill.

“She had me at 15 so we're always used to having really young, really spritely mum,” she said. Laughing, the full-time mum added: “She's often mistaken for being my younger sister, which is quite an insult.”

“All of a sudden, she started with headaches and saying she needed glasses, and at first we were all laughing, she’s never worn glasses before. We thought, ‘oh, her eyesight is going a little bit’, but then headaches were becoming prolonged, and then the sickness started.”

While Shelina was pregnant last year, suffering from morning sickness, she would ring her mum asking for help, only to find she too was being sick. “We used common sense and thought, are you dehydrated? Are you not eating enough? Is it a common flu?

“Then she developed a sense of lostness: her irritability with her mood, her relative consciousness in the house. You'd often say that she was disorientated and looked slightly red in the face, and you could say that it was like she exasperated sadness. There wasn't as much coherence to her throughout the day.

“It was becoming really weird then she started with the itchy eyes. She was going to the GP around every eight days, having blood tests. I think she’s probably Britain’s most blood-tested lady.

“Her eyes began swelling up so much we thought, ‘okay, she’s allergic to dust or something in the house’, but no one was giving her an answer for anything. She was literally sleepy and tired and didn't have a zest for anything.

“And bearing in mind she is a teacher at school, she was working with special educational needs kids. She was a pillar in the community. So the fact that all of a sudden, she just became really ill with no explanation. She's going to work for them to send her home constantly. Then come the blackouts”.

Tracey’s mystery illness came to a head on January 8 when she suffered a seizure at home in her bedroom, where her boiler is housed. She managed to make it to her neighbour's, with Ring doorbell footage showing her in despair, begging for help, yet she has no recollection of this.

She had suffered the most catastrophic amount of carbon monoxide poisoning you could go through before you die, according to Shelina, who still cannot believe her mum survived. It’s thought Tracey suffered two to three hypoxic seizures, including one in the ambulance, where they had to resuscitate her.

Once she arrived at the hospital, doctors couldn’t understand why the seemingly healthy 40-something was having seizures, caused by a lack of oxygen supply to the brain. She was placed into an induced coma for six days.

If you would like to donate to Tracey's GoFundMe fundraiser, you can do so here.

Her lifestyle was vigorously examined, and three days following admission, after spotting higher-than-normal levels of carbon monoxide in her blood, one doctor asked Shelina to go into her mum’s home and run a test.

A Cadent Gas engineer was called out, who immediately told the siblings to leave the property after being “mortified”, says Shelina. The gas was turned off, and the engineer confirmed there was a leak around the meter and the boiler.

“We’ve questioned so many times about how my mum managed to survive this, and we think there must have just been enough air flow around the house to keep her alive," Shelina continued. "So little did we know that a lot of these carbon monoxide episodes and sickness and headaches she had, it was because she was essentially locking herself into her bedroom with the boiler for long periods of time.

"So in the morning when I'm calling and her eyes are swollen and her face is puffy and she's red, it's because she's been exposed to carbon monoxide during the night. Thank God she survived." For Tracey, the events leading up to her hospitalisation are a complete blur.

She woke up not knowing what had happened, but ironically felt an overwhelming sense of relief when she was told she had been slowly poisoned by her faulty boiler, just so that she had closure. “I don’t remember that night at all, I don’t remember going to my neighbours and I do find that my memory has been affected quite a lot since I've come out of the coma as well," she reflected.

For a brief moment in the coma, she felt she had experienced the afterlife. "I actually felt like I went to the other side," she said. "I saw white light, a golden light, and that was one of the first things I said to my sister when I woke up.

"I said I was in heaven for a minute. But when I woke up, I didn't know why I was there. I had needles in my neck, tubes down my throat." Shelina says that when doctors were told carbon monoxide was present in the home, there was a sense of cheer on the ward.

“They had done so many body scans, brain scans, so the doctor actually sighed a sense of relief as there was no other explanation,” she added. “All you have to do is be in a room for 10 minutes with carbon monoxide, and you can die, so she’s an absolute anomaly.”

Tracey, who claims there was a carbon monoxide alarm in her rented property but it wasn’t working properly, added: "I finally knew that I wasn't losing my mind or the will to live. It just puts an explanation behind absolutely everything. I knew I was not a crazy person. I don't want to die. I just I was just very close to dying."

However, Tracey’s health is still not where it was, and she says her life has changed dramatically. After several seizures in the same night, she fractured her spine and now has to wear a back brace.

She’s also on a string of daily medications due to heart failure. "It was out of the frying pan into the fire, so to speak, because even though I knew what was going on now, it was a whole other struggle. I’ve been in and out of hospital ever since," Tracey added.

"There was a lot of anger to find out what it was, because the landlord clearly hasn't been doing any of the safety checks in the last five years that he should have been doing. All could have been avoided."

Tracey lost both of her jobs as she is now unfit to work. “I feel like the carpet has been pulled out from under my feet. I am not a sickly person; I am very able, and now, I feel like it’s aged me about 10 years. I’m very happy I pulled through, of course, but my life is not what it was, far from it.”

The grandma-of-three is still living in the same property where she almost died and continues to pay her landlord her monthly rent. He is denying any wrongdoing, they claim, and has reportedly told his solicitor that Tracey denied access to the property when he attempted to arrange gas safety checks over the past five years.

Tracey says that since moving in in 2014, the boiler has only undergone a safety check once or twice. She says the leak was caused in April 2024 after faulty work on the boiler flue.

“As crazy as it sounds, I’m glad I didn’t have to leave the property as I’ve lived here for 10 years," she explained. "There was comfort in not being kicked out but being ignored…

“He’s been out of the country twice; he’s just living his life. He had a face to face conversation with me while I was strapped into my backbrace, sat there with my boxes of medication and he sat there and said ‘I’m so sorry I’m going to sort this out’ and I thought that would have been an agreement with some sort of settlement but no.”

Tracey now lives with paranoia that something could go wrong again and carries a carbon monoxide detector with her around the house. She wakes herself up with nightmares and has been referred by her GP for counselling.

Documenting her recovery, she has started a TikTok page - @condroncarbonmonoxidepoisoning - where she aims to raise awareness of the dangers of carbon monoxide, while the family has set up a GoFundMe page in a bid to recover financial aid. They're raising funds to cover essential costs while she is out of work, to afford home adjustments and mobility aids, and to install a CCTV and panic button system for her home.

Tracey, who claims there are still maintenance problems to be fixed in the property, and her family have called on her landlord to be held accountable, and say they have been in touch with local authorities, but to no avail. "If her body gave up in that fight at any point, I would have been planning a funeral not a legal case," Shelina said.

"This woman would be dead and this man could continue doing what he’s been doing with other properties. There could be another mum in her forties with an unscrupulous landlord who doesn’t care about the livelihood of people in his properties. You shouldn't be allowed to be a landlord if you don't have a genuine care for the humans that reside in that property - faulty boilers, electricals, mould, these things kill people.

"There is no licensing for landlords in this area, there is nothing. Now my mum has to carry on with her fight trying to hold this man accountable until he gives up his fight. It's appalling."

If you would like to donate to Tracey's GoFundMe fundraiser, you can do so here.

Carbon monoxide is a poisonous gas that can make you seriously ill if you breathe it in. If you think you might have carbon monoxide poisoning: stop using appliances you think might be making carbon monoxide (such as a boiler, cooker or heater) if you can; open any windows and doors to let fresh air in; go outside; get medical advice as soon as possible – do not go back into the affected building until you have got advice.

If you think a gas appliance is leaking carbon monoxide, call the free National Gas Helpline immediately on 0800 111 999. Call the NHS on 111 if you think you have carbon monoxide poisoning.