A young woman known as the “Queen of Snapchat” has died after being left unattended in hospital, her family says. Elyse Foster († 22) died after surgery in 2024. Her loved ones are now considering legal action as they feel a huge let down by the staff. The always smiling beauty, who wanted to help others, was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease and later gland cancer (thymoma), informs .
Elyse underwent chemotherapy and subsequently underwent surgery at Royal Stoke Hospital on September 22 to remove as much of the tumor as possible. An inquest heard her mother, Kirsty Tittensor, stayed with her overnight and left at 8.45am on October 7 for her own examination. At 10:20 a.m., a doctor visited her and stated that her condition was normal. Shortly afterwards, however, the pediatric nursing student suffered a cardiac arrest.
The family believes Elyse could have lived if she had been examined by a team specializing in speech and language therapy. Also, those closest to her consider it wrong that she was given solid food and did not keep her intubated. According to them, after serving food, she vomited and suffocated. Due to cardiac arrest, she suffered severe brain damage from which she never recovered. Life support was turned off on October 17, 2024. Three doctors and a pathologist during the investigation could not determine with certainty the exact cause of the cardiac arrest. The coroner therefore concluded the case as death from natural causes, to which the necessary surgical intervention contributed.
“The nurse said that around 9:30 a.m. she vomited a little, so she cleaned her up and then fell asleep. We as a family believe she was vomiting again which caused her to choke and stop breathing. They left her alone. If someone had been with her, she would still be alive,” her mother and grandmother Joy Tittensor said in a statement. Relatives also pointed out that Elyse had been given solid food for the first time in two weeks, so she should have been watched.
“I have a lot of notes from Elyse about how she felt when she was left alone and about her hospital stay in general. The doctor checked her at 10:15 a.m., but she was dead 20 minutes later. We must learn from this and change the rules, we cannot fail young people like this. There must be accountability,” her beloved mother pointed out.
On October 7, she went into cardiac arrest without witnesses. Five minutes earlier, her readings had been stable, but when the nurse returned to the room, Elyse was no longer breathing. Although blood circulation was restored, the lack of oxygen caused irreversible brain damage. The official cause of death was hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy and aspiration pneumonia (pneumonia caused by inhalation of stomach contents) combined with metastatic carcinoma.
