Never Broken (12 page)

The next, fleeting, memory I have is of waking up in bed and screaming in agony. The pain from where my leg had gone was like nothing I had ever felt before. Then I was instantly knocked out again. I found out later from one of the nurses the epidural hadn’t worked properly and that’s why I was in agony, and so they had to knock me out again straight away to try and stop my pain.

Sometime later I woke up again to find myself on the ward. The curtains were pulled round my bed and immediately I
started trying to feel for my leg, which wasn’t there. I was on a huge amount of pain medication and I remember I kept reaching for my stump. Jamie was sat waiting for me with this massive grin on his face and a huge bunch of flowers. He just embraced me and told me he was so proud and how much he loved me. The first thing I asked was whether Milly was OK. He told me she was doing great and blissfully happy with my parents and none the wiser about what was going on. This was the first time in days that I actually felt I was beginning to relax for I knew Jamie and our beautiful daughter were fine and I’d come through the operation. Then Mum and Dad came in with Milly and my brothers. I was so pleased to see them. The job was done and now I could start focusing on the future and our life together.

Within a day I could push myself using my arms off my hospital trolley onto my bed. My family spent every minute of visiting hours by my bedside. Dad was messing around in my wheelchair and then taking lungfuls from my oxygen canister and we were laughing and joking. There was just a palpable sense of relief.

On the second day I had a surprise visitor: Kate Philp. It was such a kind gesture from her and a brilliant surprise for me. She brought me a plant for my room, some chocolate brownies and some fruit, as she knew how terrible the canteen could be in there. She was just so happy for me and we chatted about how I was feeling and how well the operation seemed to have gone. It was a morale boost and I was so thankful that she took the time to come there just to see me. But while she was visiting me I remember saying to her: ‘Kate, it’s so weird but at times I can’t get my breath.’ At that point it was only now and then so I was actually laughing about it, as I didn’t
think it was serious. I wasn’t in any pain at this point because I was so doped up. I was taking a lot of drugs so I wasn’t quite with it; I thought it was odd but didn’t make a big deal. And to be honest, Kate’s visit was a massive diversion as it gave me a real boost.

But after she left I began to feel quite unwell and I started to intermittently gasp for air. At first the doctors thought I was coming down with flu. Mum came to see me, with Dad and my brothers, before she headed north with Milly. They had brought me a Nintendo DS game so I had something to amuse myself with when I was recuperating, but while I remember seeing their faces, I don’t recall anything else of the meeting. I didn’t know it then but my brain wasn’t getting enough oxygen for it to be actually making any memories. Mum seemed to have a sixth sense: she became really worried about me; she just felt something was not quite right and she didn’t want to leave me, but I insisted it was the right thing for Milly. I kissed her goodbye and repeated that this was no place for such a small child.

By the time Jamie arrived for visiting hours my chest had started to get really tight and I began wheezing quite badly. I phoned Mum several times as I started to feel worse and worse, and she told me to keep her in touch with what was happening. First, they moved me from a side room to be nearer the nurses’ station so they could keep a closer eye on me. Immediately, I rang Mum to tell her and she became more concerned than I’ve ever heard her sound. I said: ‘I’m just ringing, Mum, to tell you that I love you.’ I always seem to do that in a crisis – I just wanted to speak to my mum and let her know I love her and to hear that she loved me.

Later, when my breathing started to become laboured and
I began panting, the doctors became increasingly concerned. I tried talking to Jamie but I was really struggling for breath and not making any sense whatsoever. Words were coming out of my mouth but they were all jumbled and slurred. He was concerned, but at first everyone thought with some intravenous antibiotics it would pass. Later, after visiting hours I continued to deteriorate until one of the doctors told me: ‘We are going to move you to Intensive Care, just to help with your breathing.’

That’s the last conscious memory I have before slipping into a coma.

E
ven now, Jamie says it was one of the worst moments of his life. It was shortly after 11pm on 1 June 2010 and he’d just settled down to sleep when he got a knock on the door of the special family room he was staying in at the hospital. A nurse told him he needed to get over to the ward right away as I had type 2 respiratory failure and sepsis, a condition that was causing all the organs in my body to slowly shut down. Jamie immediately knew how serious it was. He has told me since then that he ran over to the ward without even shutting the door, following the medical officer. It was clear I was dying and he knew he had to get to me.

In the short space of time before he got there I had been put in a medically induced coma and still he was not allowed to see me. At the time they were working on me to try and do everything possible to save me. He just had to sit on his own in the relatives’ room anxiously waiting for any news. I was so ill I wasn’t even moved to Intensive Care at that point as
it was deemed too risky. Within hours I was transferred there on full life support with a machine breathing for me. It was absolutely horrific as we’d gone through so much and for this to happen, on top of everything else, was too cruel to bear. With any kind of surgery there are always risks but I was just one of the few very unlucky people who developed a complication. I blame my weight, as the heavier you are when you have major surgery, the likelihood of complications increases. But doctors have since told me I was just very, very unlucky. I never breathed deeply after I came round from the surgery and I think this made my lungs sticky and then I got pneumonia. This infection led to sepsis and my immune system was so weakened that my organs went into full failure almost straight away. It was a domino effect and the doctors feared I might not make it.

Knowing Mum and Dad must be exhausted from the drive north, it wasn’t until the following morning that Jamie broke the news. Mum had only arrived in Whitby a matter of hours earlier, but she immediately said: ‘If Hannah’s in Intensive Care and there’s any chance at all that she’s going to die, then she’s going to die with her family around her.’ She dropped Milly off with my aunty, who lived in the town, and immediately drove south again, picking up Dad en route. They arrived by my bedside at 8.30pm, long after visiting hours, and were taken into a side room with a big box of tissues on the table and given a cup of tea. The doctor explained I’d developed an infection, they didn’t know what it was and they were growing cultures to try and find out.

Mum asked: ‘Is Hannah going to die?’

‘Yes, she could do,’ the doctor admitted. She explained that without the respirator I would have already died as
the infection was causing too much carbon dioxide and not enough oxygen. I was young, strong and fit, which was in my favour, but my weight was against my recovery and could also have been a contributing factor to what was happening.

When Mum came to my bedside she says it wasn’t me lying there – it was like a shell of me with nothing else there at all. She touched me and there was no response; a respirator was breathing for me, my cheeks were flushed and I was hot to touch. There were six syringe drivers pumping a cocktail of drugs and antibiotics into me, countless beeping machines and two dedicated nurses working on me all the time. Heartbreakingly, there was no response when she spoke to me. Nothing at all, not even a curling of the fingers. Where my leg should have been the sheet of the bed was just flat, smooth and untouched. But no one worried about that, they just wanted me back.

Each day of my coma was monotonous. Only two visitors were allowed at a time, so everyone took it in turns so there was always someone with me during visiting hours. Mum would come first thing, ring a bell for access to Critical Care and then wait in a side room for the nurse to come and collect her once I was ready. Once they sat beside me, they talked to me. In Intensive Care at the time there were lots of other Army injured, including a number of Gurkhas, and their parents would be doing the same, so there was a quiet hum of voices in the ward.

The nurses did everything for me and the other desperately ill patients. They combed my hair, shaved the men who were also in the ward, and all my bodily functions were taken care of with various tubes. Mum would watch families arriving each day, including the Gurkha mums, who would
always arrive in brightly coloured dresses and were often accompanied by a member of their regiment to support and translate. Mum wondered what they must have thought, coming from a different culture to see their son horrifically injured in Intensive Care.

Initially, I was in a bay by myself, but then some poor soul was put in the bed next to me while I was in the coma and died. The Army moved Mum, Dad and Jamie into a nearby hotel as in all honesty they probably thought I was going to follow closely behind so they wanted to make them as comfortable as possible as the levels of stress they were experiencing were horrendous. I’m just so thankful Milly wasn’t there to see me during this period. She was so little she wouldn’t have understood what was going on and it would have been an awful environment for her to be in.

By day three I’d become swollen. My wedding ring became tight and I was put on dialysis to try and cool my blood as my temperature raged. The doctor agreed there was a small improvement but I wasn’t out of the woods as I’d developed pneumonia in my left lung.

Five days in there was the first sign of hope. The consultant came in and told Mum and Dad she was ‘cautiously optimistic’ and that the levels of infection were improving. My dialysis machine was removed but the ventilator remained. During Mum and Dad’s visiting time I began to move my hand and chew on the tubes in my mouth. Dad immediately rang Jamie, who rushed to my bedside. Later in the afternoon, while my bed was being changed, I began to move my head and legs, initially waving my arms a little, but then I became agitated. Apparently everyone was calling my name, desperately trying to get me to surface. I began to respond to Mum’s voice and
apparently each time she spoke to me I’d open my eyes, but they were glazed and unfocused. Clearly on some level I was registering she was there and speaking to me. I know this because Mum kept a diary for the entire ten days. One of the medical staff suggested to her it might be a way of coping with what was going on and trying to get her head around the fact that her only daughter, me, was fighting again with all her strength to live. She also hoped I’d be able to read it if I recovered and wanted me to know what had happened during my lost days, not only to me, but also Milly.

I have read the diary but only once as it was so painful to read. It made me realise just how difficult it was for everyone around me, particularly being a mother myself. My aunt was also good at texting photos of Milly, including her with the school’s newborn chicks, which she was able to show Jamie. It was a relief to find out she had been having a fantastic time with our extended family and her life hadn’t been touched by the horror of what was going on.

There was a special area of the hospital which military families could use, where Mum chatted to the other parents, who all supported each other. You could go over there, make cups of tea, cook a meal and also do your laundry; staff were constantly there to provide help and support, too. You’d ring a bell to go in, give the name of the Military casualty and a member of staff would let you in with a smile, asking, ‘Would you like to talk or is there anything we can do to help?’

Initially my dad had asked the doctor: ‘What can we do to help?’ The answer was simple: ‘Support each other.’ So when visiting times ended, they did all sorts of things to distract from the stress: visit an art gallery, have a picnic in the park or even taking a walk. An activity was planned for every day.
Later, when they’d come back, they’d tell me what they’d been doing, trying to coax me from my coma. At times Mum admits she almost enjoyed her afternoons out, but hidden underneath the laughter was the knowledge that I was lifeless, back at the hospital.

On day six it was a case of two steps forward, three steps back. In the morning I obeyed an instruction from a nurse to squeeze her hand, then I began to move when I coughed, pulling faces, chewing on my tube and flailing my arms about in the air. It was distressing, but the doctors tried to reassure everyone that it was perfectly normal. The consultant explained that there is a Glasgow Scale for a depth of coma and I had been at three, which was the deepest.

While all this was going on in the real world I was living another life in my coma. This sounds absolutely surreal but they say that the mind is capable of many incredible things and very little is actually fully understood. After what I experienced I believe this. I vividly remember starting my life again: in my mind I watched myself being born, growing up, getting married and having lots of kids. It was like the most vivid and brightest dream ever and I was starring in it like a home movie of a life I’d never had. I remember being aware I was dying in my dream world and accepting it.

While I was in this state, doctors had decided that I would benefit from an experimental drug designed to make the veins more elastic in order to improve blood flow around my body. They needed my family’s consent, prepared to grasp any glimmer of light in what was an awful, pitch-black situation. The drug worked by making your arteries and veins more elastic and cutting down the strain on your body. This in turn helped the body to heal itself. The doctors explained to Mum,
Dad and Jamie that the Military, as a matter of course, never allowed experimental drugs to be used on soldiers so the decision had to be made as a family unit. Between them they all agreed I should have it: they just wanted me back and any chance of achieving that was a chance worth taking. The drug was administered straight away and it may well have saved my life.

The first sign that things were improving was when the machinery around me began to be removed. First, the breathing machinery, then the syringe drivers began to reduce in number. Mum had learned the signs to look for before they went back to the wards. Although I wasn’t totally out of the woods yet, things were looking more optimistic and it seemed I had turned a corner. When I began to wake from the coma the first thing I did was attempt to smile at Mum, although it apparently looked more like a rictus grimace when she mentioned Milly. My throat was so sore from the machines and sometimes I managed forty-one breaths a minute, other times just sixteen. I only know this as medical staff told my mum and she told me later; at the time I was very confused, drifting in and out of consciousness.

At one point I told everyone to ‘shut up’ and I seem to have believed I’d been sectioned; I was totally unaware that the white walls were those of a hospital room. But my first real memory is of people washing me and I remember feeling irritable and trying to roll to get away from them – I just wanted to be left alone. I remember my mum and Jamie leaning over me in bed and saying to me: ‘Hannah, you’ve been in a coma.’

I was so disorientated that I started to get really cross with them. ‘No, I haven’t! What the hell are you talking about?’ I slurred angrily. I was just so cross, I thought everyone was
lying to me. All my Mum and Jamie wanted to do was kiss and hug me but I was having none of it. I was so disorientated that I barely knew my own name. Although I was rude to Mum my main rage was directed at Jamie. I told him: ‘Get me out of here now!’ and ‘Go and get the car and park outside and drive me home!’ The irony of the whole situation was I could barely move, let alone walk, as my body was so weak and all my muscles had wasted away after spending ten days in a coma. I had so little strength I couldn’t actually lift my own hand up to my face. In fact I was so poorly for the two days after the op that I had to get people to scratch my face if I had an itch and even blow my nose for me.

I finally came round fully after ten days and my behaviour was totally inappropriate and very strange. It was as if all my natural social graces had gone. No one was sure if I was ever going to be Hannah again; I was just saying weird things. Even though my mum kept saying to me: ‘Hannah, you are in Intensive Care’, I thought I had been on holiday on a cruise. I insisted that my huge yacht had been bobbing and that I was feeling seasick. On one occasion I called a consultant over as I decided I wanted to get up even though I was still attached to goodness knows what. I issued an imperious order: ‘Just run along over there and do you see that wheelchair? Can you bring it over here for me.’ It was someone else’s wheelchair firstly. And secondly, you don’t speak to a consultant like that! He took it terribly well. I suppose he must have been used to this sort of thing, although Mum apologised profusely for my behaviour. Why I thought I’d appropriate someone else’s wheelchair is beyond me!

I flirted shamelessly with anyone, whether it was a nurse, doctor or another patient – it was as if all my inner filters and
good manners had been switched off. Loads of crazy things came out of my mouth. One nurse was asked: ‘Why did I have no toes on my other foot?’ He replied: ‘You do have toes.’ I then told Dad I had a fancy chair that goes up and down stairs (referring to my trolley wheels) and I begged them to tell everyone I was not a looney. Perhaps the most poignant thing I said was: ‘I can’t sleep. I’m frightened if I sleep, it will happen again.’ All the while Mum continued to log everything in the diary – while they’d been warned this might happen, it didn’t ease the shock, though.

On the second day I told Mum: ‘It was really busy in here last night. They were stacking the stretchers one on top of another. There have been loads of casualties.’ Mum later told me she looked over at one of the doctors, who discretely shook his head. It was just another bizarre hallucination. Another time I was also obsessed with dead bodies being stacked up by my bed – which of course also hadn’t happened. I told my dad I wasn’t able to sleep because I’d been on an aeroplane all night. When he gently tried to correct me and tell me there was no aeroplane, I told him to get out of my sight and get out of my room, so he had to leave. I was genuinely slightly mad. And because people gently tried to pull me back to reality I became convinced everyone was having me on and they were all conspiring against me. The fact is my mind was so muddled from the coma and what I’d been through it wasn’t making any sense of anything.