The Most Unforgettable Person I Have Ever Met

 Years ago, I was working in a Neurosurgical ICU. In the middle of the night, I admitted a 20 year old woman with a sub arachnoid hemorrhage (brain bleed). She was unresponsive, and I took her for a CT scan.

As the scan came through on the screen, both myself and the CT tech gasped. Her bleed was huge, clearly she wasn’t going to survive such a catastrophic bleed. I began thinking that I would have to alert the organ donation network, as she would make an ideal organ donor.

As the tech and I were preparing to move her back to the bed, I held her hand and explained to Karen (not her real name) what we were doing, as I always did, even if they were comatose.

As I finished my explanation, I said, “Okay?” Karen nodded her head.

I was stunned. This was the equivalent of a dead person sitting up at their funeral and saying hi.

“Did you see that?” I asked the tech.

“See what?”

“She nodded her head.”

He looked at me like I was crazy. “That’s impossible. You saw the CT. You just imagined it.”

“Karen, if you can hear me, nod your head!” I spoke loudly into her ear.

She nodded again.

The tech’s mouth fell open. “Holy shit!”

“I know. Karen, squeeze my hand!”

After a long moment, she did.

We quickly moved her onto the bed and I took her back to the ICU almost at a run.

I called the neurosurgical resident and explained what had happened. He pulled up the CT scan and told me it was impossible, that I must have imagined it.

My imagination isn’t THAT wild.

I insisted that he come right away, and that I would set him up for an EVD insertion (drill a hole in her skull to insert a drain for the excess fluid).

He arrived and I put Karen through her paces to prove to him that I wasn’t crazy. He immediately drilled the hole and inserted the drain. Afterwards, I told him I would prep her for surgery.

He said he didn’t want to take her to surgery that day, that it would be best to wait and see how she did. I disagreed. We discussed the pros and cons, and then he left.

I called the neurosurgical fellow and asked him to come for a second opinion. He assessed Karen, agreed with me, and fifteen minutes later, the surgical team came to take her to the OR. I let her parents in to see her, and then she was whisked away.

When I came back that evening, her surgery was finished, but she hadn’t woken up. She didn’t wake up the next day, or the next, or the next. After a week, she finally awakened, but she was a mess. All she could do was roll her eyes and slightly move her left hand.

After two weeks of no improvement, I asked to be removed from her case. I couldn’t bear seeing her parents day after day and knowing that if I hadn’t been so attentive and seen her first nod, or pushed so hard for the surgery, she would have died that first day and it probably would have been better for everyone.

Now she was going to have to live the rest of her life in a semi-vegetative state, in long term care, most likely destroying her parent’s finances and lives.

I felt so guilty about what I had done that I was relieved when she finally transferred out of the ICU a month later with no improvement in her condition.

Almost a year later, her parents came back to the ICU to see me. I felt sure that they were coming to tell me she had died. Behind them, walked this pretty young woman whom I didn’t recognize. Her mother came up to me and gave me a hug.

She turned to the young woman. “Karen, this is the nurse I told you about. The one who saved your life.”

The young woman came up to me. “I don’t remember you at all, but my parents told me what you did. Thank you for saving my life.” And she gave me a hug.

I was speechless. She was completely recovered except for some residual weakness in her right arm and leg. Her mother proudly told me that she had just re-enrolled in college to make up for the time she had lost.

I tend not to use the word miracle, but her recovery was certainly unprecedented, and makes her unforgettable for me.