Woman comes out of coma when medic accinbally touches her toe
When its the right time to switch off the machines keeping a patient alive? On July 20, Sam Hemming, 22, a Bangor University graduate and keen sportswoman, was a passenger in her boyfriend’s car when it crashed on the M6. The car flipped over. Sam Hemming banged her head hard on the window.
At hospital, after six hours of operations doctors placed the badly injured woman in a coma. They told her parents Emma had no chance of recovery. For 19 days she showed no sign of brain activity. They were all set to tun off the life-support machines when Emma’s toe moved when a staff member inadvertently brushed it with an ice-cold wipe.
“The computer showed some brain activity,” Ms Hemming’s mother, Carol, tells the Times. “It was amazing. She would have had the heat and cold test before they switched the machine off but they brushed it across her toe earlier than expected and it saved her.”
Eight weeks later Emma returned to her parents’ Hereford home. She has learnt to talk and walk.
“Doctors are totally in shock,” Mrs Hemming adds. “You see the specialist surgeons, paramedics and police and they look at Sammy and their mouths fall open. Why her condition is different is that part of the brain has developed her speech and movement. That is why all the neurosurgeons were getting so excited as it is very rarely seen. She is a walking miracle.”
Says Emma: “My talking is fine and I just want to get better now. Before the accident I wanted to be a solicitor and that ambition hasn’t changed. I still want a career in the law.”
Medicine is amazing. (The legal profession, less so.)
Posted: 30th, September 2016 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
