Woman writing book on ‘locked in’ paralysis recovery
In a lengthy interview with the Irish Examiner, the 24-year-old from Murroe said she already has a proposal for a book, which describes her progress from complete paralysis to now being able to walk up to 30 metres with support.
She can now breathe independently for up to nine hours without a ventilator, and thanks to a device on her trachea, she is also able to speak.
It has been a long road since Sept 2008 when, having contracted a rare airborne brain infection, Chlamydia Psittacosis while working in a pet shop in Limerick, she had to undergo emergency neurosurgery at Cork University Hospital and awoke from a coma into a ‘locked in’ state.
As her family explains in the interview, at one stage it was thought she was clinically dead and doctors considered turning off the machines that were breathing for her.
One expert at the Oxford Centre for Enablement, which Patricia will revisit four times in the next year, said of her remarkable recovery: “I’ve seen your scans — you’re not supposed to be here.”
Similarly, the surgeon who carried out the neurosurgery told her family immediately afterwards: “I’ve done all I can, but I don’t think she will survive.”
However, she eventually opened her eyes, began communicating through a system of blinking, and is now moving towards the prospect of independent living.
“It shows my strength,” she said, while also admitting that sometimes she does reflect on the period since she first fell ill, which included 1,069 days in hospital. “Maybe I would say ‘why did this happen to me?’” she said. “But what comes, comes.”
She recently wrote her first post on Facebook since she fell ill, using her hands, and she sent her first email while in Oxford. Other targets — “very small goals, but big for me” — include increasing mobility, going on a family holiday next year, more music concerts and shopping trips and building her dream house. “I am building a house to suit my needs,” she says.
Her mother Annette said: “For families [in similar circumstances], I don’t think they should take the first diagnosis they are told. They should get more people involved and I would advise people with people in hospital for such a long time to fight.
“Do not leave any stone unturned.”
