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Topics: NHS, Health, Mental Health, Women's Health, UK News, Life, Real Life
Jen Thomas
Topics: NHS, Health, Mental Health, Women's Health, UK News, Life, Real Life
A 23-year-old woman ended up being hospitalised after she entered her symptoms into ChatGPT.
Phoebe Tesoriere, from Cardiff, turned to the AI bot after she felt she was being fobbed off by her GP when she received a diagnosis of anxiety for her debilitating symptoms.
Many people use ChatGPT for relationship or life advice, to meal plan or to come up with an interior design idea, but Phoebe, a teacher, used it to secure a diagnosis for a shockingly rare condition.
Ever since she was little, Phoebe had always struggled with abnormal walking.
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Her unusual gait was put down to the absence of her left hip socket which she has since had bone grafts to restore.
For more than four years, she was repeatedly misdiagnosed with multiple conditions, including anxiety.
Doctors also thought she had Todd's Paralysis, a condition where your legs can become tied and stiff after seizures.
Horrifyingly, Phoebe suffered from a seizure in 2025 which left her in a coma for 48 hours.
Despite this, she was sent a letter by her doctor saying if she came back to hospital she would be treated as a mental health patient.
It was this letter that drove Phoebe to type her symptoms into ChatGPT out of desperation.
She was doubly incontinent, suffering from loss of feeling below her belly button and elbows, locked ankles, no reflexes or hyper reflexes, epilepsy, hair loss, and an inability to walk.
ChatGPT instantly came back with a diagnosis of Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia.
The name is a general term for a group of rare inherited disorders that cause weakness and stiffness in the leg muscles.
The condition gradually worsens over time, which matched Phoebe's experiences.
She took the AI findings to her GP, which led to genetic testing.
In August 2025, the results came back and confirmed the ChatGPT diagnosis was correct, and she was in fact suffering from the complex quadriplegic type, affecting all four of her limbs.
Her genes had mutated as a baby after contracting MRSA at just three days old.
She is now fundraising to afford a special wheelchair to help adapt to her diagnosis.
Phoebe says: “It was such a bittersweet moment to be diagnosed after being told it was anxiety.
“To go from that to matter of weeks later being told actually you’ve got this condition which will change your whole life," she explains.
“It’s one of those things where I’m happy to have my diagnosis because it made sense but I’d rather it be anything else but this.
“People think ‘oh she just can’t walk’, or ‘it’s a massive thing she’s had but at least it’s not a spinal cord injury’.
“It is, and it’s progressive," she insists. “At night I have to wear splints on my arms to keep them functioning as long as possible.
“There is no treatment but my doctors hope they can slow the progression, but there’s nothing they can do to stop it”.
“When I was in physio and I started walking everyone was like ‘this is unheard of’ and ‘it’s a miracle’ kind of thing,” she says.
Phoebe said it was the response from ChatGPT that spurred her on to seek the diagnosis.
“I thought I’d just go to the doctors, they worst thing they could say is no. We did genetic testing and it came back I had the condition which explained everything."
Phoebe said: “I need a specific back on my wheelchair to support my spine and stop it deteriorating.
“I want to stay as independent as I can and obviously the type the NHS give you, you can’t push yourself”.
A spokesperson for Cardiff and Vale University Health Board said: “We are sorry to hear about Phoebe’s experience while in our care and recognise how difficult the process of obtaining a diagnosis has been for her and her family.
"As it would be inappropriate to comment on an individual patient case, we are unable to comment further.
"Phoebe is welcome to contact our Concerns Team should she wish to discuss any aspect of the care she received at Cardiff and Vale University Health Board.”