A mother told she had terminal cancer by doctors who ignored her pleas for help 13 times has made a miracle recovery following the UK's first operation of its kind. Ruth McDonagh was repeatedly turned away by medics over the course of two years despite suffering from the classic symptoms of bowel cancer. By the time it was diagnosed, she was told she had just 18 months left to live as a huge tumour in her bowel had grown so large it was almost inoperable. Her only option was a £100,000 operation only available in the US which was certain to leave her paralysed from the waist down. But at the eleventh hour a team of UK doctors trained in the American technique agreed to carry out Ruth's surgery in a 13-hour operation never before carried out in this country.
AN American accountant has grown the world's biggest MELON and smashed his way into the record books with his mammoth 350 .
A hungry hippo is seconds away from catching a bird in its gigantic jaws .
Ashlee, 20, has always known that she was supposed to be a girl .
SITTING quietly at the edge of the lake, these two baby bears watch and learn as the adults hunt for fish .
Surveying its surroundings, a tiny harvest mouse climbs the stem of a dandelion .
BOXING DAY has come early for this pair of feisty squirrels, as their Christmas party quickly turns sour .
A deranged dad beat his girlfriend so savagely in a vicious 30 minute attack that the indent of his sovereign ring was left on her face .
CLIMBING, falling and tugging on his weary mum, this little orangutan is up to all kinds of trouble .
WENDY Randall, 16, from Kent is now training to be a bodybuilder after recovering from anorexia .
A chipmunk, with his cheeks full to bursting, has no intention of leaving with an empty stomach .
STARING eagerly into the camera, this little toad is full of curiosity .
A Romanian photographer has captured the unique patterns of hundreds of human eyes in a series of striking macro shots .