Last weekend Carsten wrote an email to a friend in Vancouver (Canada) who asked what happend to Stephanie. It was the first time we told that story and the circumstances in English and therefore we want to use nearly the same text in this blog entry for all our friends that couldn’t understand German. We hope that we found the right words:

Normally we would guide everybody to Olgas blog with the special segment of Stephanie’s way to recovery …

• all entries with Stephanie
• first entry with explanation 

… but unfortunately everything is in German and we think even with an automatic translation it might be hard to understand or to follow. Therefore let’s try to explain the main things in English:

Stephanie is in hospital now since August, 26th.

In that morning she asked her boyfriend to bring her to the doctor, because she felt dizzy and bad since the night before. Sitting in the car she asked him to get a plastic bag, in case she would throw up – in Berlin it could be hard to stop at the edge of the street and open the door to prevent a mess inside the car. When he got back, Stephanie was already unconscious and we think she didn’t breathe since 5-10 minutes. He called the ambulance and tried to bring her into lateral position. When the emergency arrived 5 min later they started reanimation of heart and breathe. Since that Stephanie is in comatose state … today is day 117.

She was 40 days in Berlin’s CharitĂ© (Germany’s best known hospital) and on October, 5th the was transfered to a rehabilitation hospital in our near. To remember: we moved from Dresden to the east of Hamburg in January 2020.

What happend it’s called pulmonary embolism. During weeks of doing nothing (Corona’s restrictions forced her to home schooling with university lessions (stay at home) and closed every gym (no sports, no volleyball team)), a thrombosis starts in the left leg (the stopper is called thromb) and after starting with exercising in a fitness studio this thromb got loose and run though the heart in to the lungs where it got stuck again. After 3-4 exercising sessions/days her body got into failure of circulation and in the evening she felt weakly and dizzy. With her boyfriend she decided to go to the doctor the next day if she still feels ill. The next morning her body collapsed – see above.

Stephanie is still without conciousness – it’s called „apallic syndrome“ – got a tracheostomy for the breathing machine but is working on breathing alone (maximum of 11 hours is possbile now) and gets artificial nutrition / tube feeding. Now the hospital staff works on reducing the medication, tries to wake her up slowly, stimulates body and muscles with therapy training and waits for the time to start to find out which parts of the brain are irrecoverable gone (CT and MRT are showing white/dead areas) and what is Stephanie able to compensate with the working rest. We always think of the possibilities she lost: ability to speek, motor activity (body movement), memory (remebering), intelligence or a mix of them. But we have to wait till she will recover from anaesthetic caused by an medication cocktail of nearly 17 different drugs, e.g. pain, epilepsy, blood thinner, …

That’s our doing all the time now: waiting, waiting, waiting. The complete recovery will only be done within tiny steps and small things during progress. First she needs to learn again about breathing, swallowing, simple response or kind of articulation, simple movements of body parts like arms, hands and fingers. Already 74 days in rehabilitation and still counting.

But we can handle it – if not we, who else could ? In Germany we say „we cannot put our heads into sand (like an ostrich)“. Therefore we visit her every day: 20 min drive, 1 hour visit, 20 min drive = approx. 2 hours per day. During Corona’s restrictions only one of us can go into her room, therefore Carsten let Olga go ahead and wait outside in the car (watching movies on a tablet). Other hospitals already cancelled every possibility to visit – in that way we can be grateful. One day this all will be over …

That’s it what we can give everybody as an explanation what happened in English. If something is unclear please don’t hesitate to ask in the comments.

Greetings from Schleswig-Holstein in the north of Germany.
ciao
Olga & Carsten