Image source, Family handout

A family hopes to create a lasting legacy for a woman who died suddenly from a brain aneurysm while running a fitness class.

Katy Hancock, 32, from Witchford in Cambridgeshire, died a week after she collapsed following a rupture.

Siobhan Taylor, her mother, said they had been left "devastated" as she was loved by everyone.

She was "passionate about exercise" and they hoped to build something around fitness where she taught, she added.

Image source, Family handout

Mrs Hancock was a teacher at Cottenham Primary School and ran fitness classes in her spare time. She was also a wife to Ed Hancock and a mother to Dylan, four and Taylor, two.

On 25 January, Mrs Hancock was taking a trampoline class in Chatteris when "she staggered, collapsed and went peculiar", Mrs Taylor said.

"It was a complete shock and totally out of the blue."

Paramedics thought she "hadn't eaten and drunk enough and had over-exercised", she added.

"Sian, her sister and a nurse, was with her - she was adamant her behaviour wasn't normal, so wanted her checked fully out."

She was taken to Hinchingbrooke Hospital and then to Addenbrooke's in Cambridge for surgery following a CT scan.

"When they did the surgery, she had another massive bleed, and at that point it didn't look hopeful," said Mrs Taylor.

"She did hang on for another week and died on 1 February."

Image source, Family handout

Mrs Taylor said the whole family, including her father Chris Taylor and sisters Sian Adomeit and Hannah Catley, "were terribly devastated".

"I can't see how people live with the pain of losing a child, but you have got to go on as I have five, soon to be six grandchildren, who I help to look after.

'Symptomless'

"Katy was the healthiest and fittest of the entire family.

"She was very conscious of what she ate, was very passionate about exercise, and of all the people who should drop down dead, she'd be the last person you'd expect."

Mrs Taylor believes she was born with the aneurysm, which is a bulge in a blood vessel caused by a weakness in the vessel wall.

"At any point she could have had a CT scan and it might have been picked up and repaired, but they're symptomless, so there's no way of knowing it was there," said Mrs Taylor.

Image source, Family handout

"She was probably the most honest person I knew. She was very straight talking, she was very funny, had an incredible memory, was very witty and very quick with her retorts," she said.

"She always had the right answers, she was conscientious, hard-working and was never off sick."

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The family decided to raise funds for "Katy's Kids' Education Fund" after being inundated with flowers.

More than £21,000 has been raised so far, with the money set to buy two benches at Milton Country Park and The Orchard, Haddenham, as well as "something fitness-based, like a climbing wall" at her school.

The rest would be spent on her children's further education, "as that was what she was passionate about", her mother added.

What is a brain aneurysm?

Source: NHS

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