I know what it really is like to come out of a coma

By Saturday afternoon, my greatest good friend, Simon, who by now hadn’t heard from me for days, was asking yourself the place I could be. I hadn’t answered my mobile, so he tried the landline. Pamela, my flatmate, who hadn’t witnessed me for days both, presumed I was out of town on another story, but said she’d examine my area just in situation. “He’s right here,” she said following a shocked silence. “I’ll have to ring you back. He wants an ambulance.”

I was sparked out on the bedroom floor and could not be roused. Judging from the mess, there had been really a struggle: the duvet was in a knotted pile, and with a violent thrash I had knocked above a bedside lamp. The bulb, hot from getting left on for numerous hours, if not days, was now spot-welded to my forehead.

Pamela later advised me that I was so swollen, she barely recognised me. I had doubled in size – “like the Michelin Man” – and was rock tough to the touch. I was also covered in black welts from the onset of meningococcal septicaemia.

Needless to say, I really don’t recall any of this – and definitely have no memory of the fortnight I spent in a coma. I’m informed that on admission to Homerton University Hospital in east London, I was packed in ice to reduce the swelling, specially on my brain, and given a transfusion to remove from my bloodstream the harmful toxins that had triggered my body to balloon. I also underwent emergency surgical treatment to avoid gangrene from taking my right arm and leg, on which my whole body excess weight had been resting. I required skin grafts to patch up the lamp burn up on my forehead and the surgeon’s different incisions made to cut away the ulcerated tissue.

I only located out about my ordeal, and the doctors’ dire prognosis about the probability of recovery, as soon as I’d emerged from the coma. It was a hot August afternoon, some 13 days right after I’d been admitted. My sister Nicola was at my hospital bedside, rather than the Hawaiian seashore on which she had been sunbathing a fortnight earlier on her honeymoon. My initial voluntary movements for days ahead of slipping back into unconsciousness had been an anguished blink and a weak grab for the feeding tubes scratching at my throat.

The subsequent day, I was capable to preserve consciousness briefly – this time, as a perform colleague, Angelina, sat at my bedside. Now, there was no discomfort or discomfort, not that I remember anyway: I was pumped with morphine in anticipation of a woozy slide back into the outside planet.

It dawned gradually that I couldn’t move my legs. My correct one particular was in a cast following an operation to get rid of the stress sores I had acquired on the bedroom floor, whilst the left was bandaged up following strips of skin had been lifted from it to patch up my scorched forehead (now also underneath wraps). I imagine it was quite a sight.

But as I lay there, capable only to move my one good hand, which I navigated more than my broken body, I located anything that gave me hope: I had misplaced so much excess weight on the floor and in the coma (I was now significantly less than eight stone) that, for the very first time in my daily life, I had something approaching a 6-pack.

But there was a lot more bad information to come. In investing so significantly time lying unconscious at residence, I had crushed a nerve in my proper forearm that meant my hand was no longer functioning lifted out of the supportive splint, it flopped lifelessly at the wrist. I was warned it may well by no means repair itself the very first knockback.

However, little fazed me in those very first few days after the coma, as I was on morphine. My very first conversation was about why my good friend was sitting beside me at all to my spaced-out thoughts, I was in a hotel bed the morning following my sister’s wedding ceremony, which had took place a full month earlier. Ah, but no – the area was sweltering and vibrant with sunlight, so I reasoned I should be somewhere scorching, like Sydney! How, then, had Angelina received here?

“I drove by following operate,” she explained, a minor teary at my getting back in the space.

“Don’t be silly,” I stated, opiate ache relievers becoming no match for pure logic. “You can’t drive to Australia . . .”

Over the following days, a volley of close friends and household, relieved to see that I had emerged from the coma, were kept entertained, in amongst naps, by my morphine-induced hallucinations. I had turn into convinced that the pattern in the ward’s green curtains kept shifting shape. The “No Smoking” indicator on the hospital wall, if I dared search for much more than a split second, scrambled its letters like an airport departure board. On 1 occasion, I pointed at the heart check by my bed and whispered proudly to my guests: “Look who’s come to see me – Madonna!”

I invested almost 10 weeks in two different hospitals – which at the time felt like forever, but I’m amazed now that I recovered so swiftly. The initial methods in my rehabilitation have been the hardest. In the 1st days right after the coma, currently being stored in something other than the horizontal position produced me so queasy, I had to close my eyes and rest. It was days prior to I could feel about sitting up. Standing – with the help of, very first, a strolling frame, then crutches – was some thing attempted over the weeks. It was only when I could present nurses that I could handle a flight of stairs unaided that I was allowed to go residence.

Ten many years on – and this may possibly very nicely just be early onset middle age – I get the occasional psychological block, specifically with names. I really do not endure from migraines or, worse, flashbacks (the memory bank of people days major up to the coma is shot). The broken nerves in my squashed arm did, right after significantly care from the physios at the Royal London Hospital, ultimately repair themselves and give me back the use of my hand. The movement in my wrist is limited, even though, which can make handshakes awkward, painful even, and I sometimes have to ask for help opening jam jars. A game of tennis is out of the query – I couldn’t grip the racquet – but I can still type and play the piano.

To pass me in the street, you wouldn’t know I’d ever had a brush with death. The oblong burn up on my hairline is concealed with the judicious application of styling wax. The only obvious reminder of the incident is the collection of remarkable scars up my right side. In T-shirt weather, inquisitive youngsters ask inquiries but seldom straight: “Mummy, what took place to that man’s arm?”

And if I am asked outright, a white lie generally does the trick: “Shark attack  . . .”

It couldn’t be more from the reality, but it is simpler than explaining what actually happened.

I know what it really is like to come out of a coma