Saving Zali by Lisa Venables

Author:Lisa Venables [Venables, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia
Published: 2014-09-25T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 28

Monday 29 June 2009, 58 days in hospital

11 days in PICU

The next day was the sixth day of Zali’s coma. The following day it would be time for her to be woken up. The immediate risk of a heart attack had gone and her kidneys were functioning on their own. The doctors explained that first thing the following morning they would reduce the drug that paralysed her body so she didn’t move during the coma. After that they would reduce the drug that kept her in a coma. All going well, she should wake up slowly on her own. They would bring her back, and in a few days take her off intubation to breathe on her own.

Having had no experience of someone coming out of a coma I thought the doctors would wait until we got there and she would wake up slowly to the loving faces of anxiously waiting parents. I thought there would be a briefing in the morning, a careful plan organised, then they would do it.

Real life, however, is much more practical. Changeover took place at 6.30 am Monday 29 June. At 7 am the drugs were reduced to give the medical team time to get more specialists should something go wrong during the day. By 7.30 am, when we came in thinking we were early, Zali was awake and waiting for us.

Everything was fine. Her heart rate was a little high and her blood pressure a little low but she didn’t fiddle with the tubes coming out of her nose and she wasn’t distressed. She was happy to see us and could hold our hand and move her arms and head. Her head movements were a bit awkward because of the intubation, but she was able to move.

She could understand what we were saying to her but it took a while for her to get used to not being able to talk. The tube that kept her breathing went up her nose, down her throat, through her vocal cords and into her lungs. As it passed through the cords they were paralysed. She accepted really quickly that she couldn’t speak but it didn’t matter to me. I felt like her voice was in my head anyway and I could hear everything she mouthed. She could point out things she wanted, she was very tired, but very pleased to be back.

Lachie and Kala came to visit. Lachlan was enormously relieved that Za was okay. He couldn’t bear to think that things could be worse for her. Also, he felt that if I was okay, he would be okay. Kala seemed a bit shocked that the tube coming out of Za’s nose was still breathing for her, but she was relieved that Zali had come out of the coma. Andrew had been worried that she wouldn’t come out of the coma or would be brain dead if she did. I had been worried that her body would wake up, remember the insults it had suffered and quit on her.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.