Bettina Lerman spent weeks on a respirator after get sick with Covid-19 and did not respond to doctors’ efforts to wake her from her coma when her family made the difficult decision to withdraw life support.
The family made preparations for the funeral, chose their coffin and headstone as they prepared to say goodbye, his son Andrew Lerman told CNN.
On the day they planned to take her off life support, Lerman said, he got a call from one of his doctors at Maine Medical Center, in Portland.
“He said ‘well, I need you to come here right away.’ I said, ‘Okay, what’s wrong?’” Lerman said. “He said, ‘Well, it’s okay. Your mom woke up.’” Lerman said he dropped the phone when he got the news.
More than 768,000 people have died from Covid-19 in the United States since the start of the pandemic, according to Johns Hopkins University. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) claim that 58.9% of the country’s population is fully vaccinated.
Lerman said his mother, who will turn 70 in February, had several health problems, including diabetes, and had a heart attack and quadruple bypass surgery a few years ago.
She began showing symptoms of Covid-19 in early September, was diagnosed when she was admitted to the hospital on Sept. 12, and was hooked up to a ventilator on Sept. 21, she said. She was not vaccinated but planned to get vaccinated when she became ill, she said.
Her condition worsened and doctors told the family that they did not expect her to recover.
“We had a family meeting with the hospital because my mom wasn’t waking up. No matter what they did, they couldn’t make her wake up,” Lerman said. “They said her lungs were completely destroyed. There is irreversible damage, but that won’t happen.”
It’s been about three weeks since Bettina woke up on Oct. 29, and a hospital spokeswoman told the CNN that she is in serious condition. The hospital was unable to disclose additional information due to privacy laws.
Lerman said his mother has not suffered organ failure and no one really understands how well she is.
“My mom is very religious and so are a lot of her friends, church and everything, and they’ve all been praying for her,” she said. “So they can’t explain it from a medical point of view. Maybe it’s from a religious point of view. I’m not that religious, but I’m starting to believe there’s something that helped her.”
Lerman said she talked to her mother for hours on Wednesday (18) and that she can move her hands and arms and breathe on her own for a few hours with a little oxygen instead of a respirator.
“She knows where she is, who she is, she’s so perceptive,” Lerman said. “Usually, when someone comes out of a coma like that, they say the patients have delusions and are very confused. From day one, she hasn’t experienced any of this.”
He said the mother is still not out of harm’s way, and there could still be setbacks, but the medical team is trying to put her on a rehab list to help her regain her range of motion.
She is already receiving physical therapy to help rebuild the muscle strength she lost during her hospital stay.
Lerman and his mother live in Florida, but both travel to Maine a lot to care for their father, who has stage 4 cancer. Lerman’s father fell ill with Covid-19 at the same time as his mother, but he recovered. .
Lerman and his wife also contracted Covid-19 and said they will be vaccinated in a few weeks, when they are eligible.
When they thought she wouldn’t recover, Lerman said, the family gave up her mother’s apartment in Florida, collected important family items, and donated the rest of their possessions to other residents of the building.
Your sister organized a GoFundMe campaign to raise money to help her mother while she was recovering.
Lerman said her mother said she was praying during her coma and remembers the people who visited her and talked.
“So the words of encouragement I have is that you don’t give up hope, and when you visit your family in this situation, talk to them because they can hear you,” he said.
He also said that every Covid-19 case is different and he knows that not everyone will be able to recover like his mother. “She is a miracle,” he said.
Translated text. Read the original in Spanish.
Reference: CNN Brasil
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