Page 12 - IAV Digital Magazine #473

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Woman Wakes Up After Nearly 30 years In Coma
By Jami Ganz, NY Daily News
An Emirati woman, who has been in a coma since 1991, has miraculously awoken from her vegetative state.
Munira Abdulla was 32 when she fell into a coma after her car col- lided with a bus. Her brother-in- law was driving the car she was in, and she was sitting in the backseat with her toddler son.
Omar Webair, then 4, was cra- dled in his moth- er’s arms and escaped with just a bruise. “When she saw the crash coming, she hugged me to protect me from the blow,” he told The National, on Monday.
Abdulla, who was not treated until hours later, was left with a severe brain injury, and was found to be in a minimally conscious state after she was transferred to a London hospital. She was “com- pletely unrespon- sive, with next to no awareness of her surround- ings,” according
to The National, though she could sense pain.
The woman was brought back to the United Arab Emirates city of Al Ain, near her home in Oman, before insurance requirements mandated she be transferred a few years later to a slew of medical facilities. Abdulla was transferred
to Germany after Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Court provided her family with a grant in 2017.
In Germany, she was operated on numerous times “to correct her severely short- ened arm and leg muscles,” accord- ing to the BBC, which added, “She was given medication to
improve her state, including her wakefulness.”
Webair had an argument in his mother’s hospital room in 2018, which, as he said, “caused her a shock."
“She was making strange sounds and I kept calling the doctors to examine her,” he said. “They said
everything was normal.”
Within three days, he heard his mother calling his name, before becoming increasingly responsive. She’s now able to par- ticipate in certain conversations and can actively feel pain.
Abdulla has since returned to Abu Dhabi and contin- ues to undergo physiotherapy and rehabilitation.
Her progress, while miraculous, is rare, with the BBC noting “there are only a few cases of peo- ple recovering consciousness after several years," and recovery can still be a long way off.
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