13 days coma and 3 weeks a vegetable

While I was unconscious, I was already placed inside the operating theater where a team of neurosurgeons had already begun to shave my hair off and removed the top half of my scalp to perform an emergency craniotomy. They mostly made their incisions from the front to the back of my scalp and removed the right half of it. The second incision was made directly on my cranium, a hole as wide as 3cm was made on the outer surface of my skull in order for the surgeons to insert their tools and begin removing my AVM. At this stage, the bleeding was still happening and the surgeons are doing their best to stop all the feeders that are feeding my AVM and to detach it from any healthy brain tissue. unfortunately, the only option to do this would be to remove a small chunk of my brain, in this case, a small part of my right frontoparietal lobe( part of the brain responsible for left-sided movement). The surgery starts by inserting clippings on the feeder that's supplying oxygenated blood to the nidus, this, in turn, would reduce the bleeding and reduce the swelling on the surrounding healthy cells. Once the clippings have been placed on the arterial feeders of my AVM, the surgeons could begin removing large chunks of the AVM. it is necessary that all parts of it are removed, especially the nidus. If some remnants of it remain, it would eventually recruit unused arteries and create another nidus, causing further complications in my recovery. However, due to my critical condition, the professors had to do it quickly to save my life and it wasn't done thoroughly, leaving 2cm of it behind.

The surgery lasted for a total of 7 to 8 hours. I went into the operating room at 2.30pm and finished at 9.30pm, where I was sent off to the ICU to spend the next 13 days in a coma. While I was unconscious, nurses would come to turn me over on my side to prevent any pressure wounds from appearing as a result of not moving for many days. during my time at the ICU, some of my friends came to visit me, sadly they couldn't do much to help me they were not allowed to come inside the ICU in large groups only one or two were allowed to come inside. Their duration inside the ICU was only between 5to 10 minutes, after that they would have to leave and come back another day. My parents were the first to see me after my surgery, followed by my close friends; Roni, Indira, Jordan, and Eric. They all came bearing gifts and get well cards to no avail, I was absent-minded and couldn't response to anything.

The professors would come in every day to check on my progress. Their goal was to monitor my inter-cranial pressure and ensure that it has reached the stable level so I could be brought back to consciousness from my coma. However, this took a long time for it to happen. during this period my cranial pressure would fluctuate drastically, causing changes in temperature and uncontrollable urination and defecation. Needless to say, I was practically soaking in my own urine and excrements during my time at the ICU. At times the urination would cause rashes on my back and a wound specialist would often be called to inspect these rashes to ensure that it's not serious or life-threatening. At some point at the ICU, one of the doctors discovered that there was still excess cerebral fluid and i was rushed back to the operating theater to be cut open again to insert a draining tube to get rid of the excess fluid. Thankfully this procedure only lasted for a few hours and I was sent back to the ICU ward. Unfortunately, my draining tube was inserted on the left side of my head so the doctors would have to shave my hair and remove my left scalp to drill a hole on my skull to insert the draining tube.

After 13 days, the doctors concluded that it was safe for me to be awakened from my coma and so they slowly reduce my anesthetics( morphine and propohol). The result of this reduction caused me to have epileptic-like seizures which lasted for a couple of minutes, my mother had to watch me shake from my seizures in horror as the nurses and doctors didn't know what to do. however, the seizures eventually came to a stop and an EEG machine was placed on my head to determine whether my seizures were epileptic or caused by the anesthetics wearing off. so far there was no sign of epilepsy and I was brought to the HDU ward to be monitored by my team of doctors and neurosurgeons. By the time I was inside the high dependency unit, I was already awake but not conscious. I was labeled a vegetable as I was in a vegetative state. one of the nurses by the name of Rachel told my mum that I will spend the rest of my life as a brain dead veggie but I proved her wrong after 3 weeks when all of my memories returned and I was finally aware of my surroundings.

My time at the ICU and HDU wards were a complete blur to me, I had no full recollection of what happened during my stay there. At times when I'm doing nothing, I would get sudden flashbacks of me being turned to my side by my nurses, who were looking after me during my time there. While I was there, my mother would try to stimulate me in hope of bringing back my consciousness. She would do this by playing music on my phone that I was carrying while I was running. she would put my headsets o my ear and randomly select the songs on my playlist and play it for a couple of minutes. Sometimes she would use her phone to play videos on youtube. The first few videos were unsuccessful. Later in the coming few days, she eventually succeeded. One of the videos that she played was about an abandoned puppy that was left on the streets, this video made me cry as my dog had passed away while I was doing my studies at University and I didn't have the chance to be with him in his last hours. Though I was crying from watching the video, it wasn't certain if I was fully aware of watching it or if it was just a subconscious response. The crying itself only lasted a few minutes, after that, I went back to being a vegetable again.