Coma Chronicles 1

My mother with her grandson

I’ve been away for a while. My mother went into hospital on the 8th of July 2008 because her heart was beating too fast, and out of rhythm. It was the first day of the Citizen journalism workshop. I rushed off to the hospital that evening, and she seemed fine, but out of breath and easily tired. A week later a doctor transferred her from the cardiac care unit (high care) to a ordinary ward. She went into cardiac arrest  while there (ventricular fibrillation) and they took a while to resuscitate her.

The hospital didn’t call me, so I arrived that evening after work to visit and someone else was in her bed. The nurses at the station told me she was taken back to the cardiac care unit. When I got there, she had been ventilated and was having seizures. She was attached to a million tubes. They told us they didn’t know if she would survive and her heart could give out. When we touched her, or spoke to her she would sieze up, her eyes rolling back in her head.

My father and I stayed the night, Robert brought us food and comfort. Cathy arrived from Cape Town the next day. The Neurologist told us that he didn’t think there was a chance her brain would recover – she had suffered an anoxic brain injury (involving the whole brain) and had profound brain damage.  We were utterly shocked and horrified. Since that time, she was transferred from the hospital to a step-down facility and after ebing classified as being in a persistant vegetatiev state, transfered to a ‘frail care’ centre, where she died. The process took just over 4 months.

I wrote some during the horrible time she was in a coma, before her passing away on the 3rd of November 2008. I’m hoping that other people who have had a loved one in a coma or vegetative state will find it useful.