Kertisha Brabson/Facebook/WBNSA woman has revealed how she woke up from a coma seven months after doctors advised her family to turn off life support following a seizure.
Mum-of-two Kertisha Brabson’s family were told she was ‘brain dead’ when they were unable to diagnose her condition.
Miraculously, she has since made a full recovery after her mum enlisted help from a specialist who diagnosed and treated Kertisha’s Anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, which means her body’s antibodies were attacking her own brain cells.
Speaking to WBNS, Kertisha, from Ohio, said it all began in September 2018 when she began acting strangely, before suffering a seizure and slipping into a coma.
She had been taken to hospital in Alliance, Ohio, before the seizure, where she was seen dancing and reaching for objects which didn’t exist as well as speaking in sentences that didn’t make any sense.
Kertisha has no memory of what happened next, and she spent the next seven months in a hospital bed linked up to a life support machine.
Doctors were unable to diagnose the 31-year-old’s condition and told her mum, Kertease Williams, that she should ‘pull the plug’ on her ‘brain dead’ daughter.
Eventually, it was discovered Kertisha had Anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, but they were unsure how to treat it, or whether there was even treatment available.
Determined to get the right help for her daughter, Kertease moved her daughter around several different hospitals trying to find specialists who would help her.
Kertisha Brabson/FacebookShe told WBNS:
Something had taken over and [was] ruining my daughter. I just don’t know what.
We were going to keep moving her because once I saw the doctors scratching their heads that clearly let me know they gave up and they don’t know what’s going on with her [sic].
Every decision that I made was because she got [sic] two little people that was [sic] depending on their mother to come home, and that was her kids [sic].
Kertisha was taken to Ohio State’s Brain and Spinal Hospital, where she was having up to 20 seizures a day.
According to doctor Shraddha Mainali, a stroke and neuro critical care specialist, people with this condition have a ‘mortality rate above 60%’.
WBNSWhen she woke, Kertisha was convinced it was still September, believing it was the very same day she had fallen into a coma seven months prior.
She recalled:
The nurse was like, ‘Yeah, Ms Brabson, you’ve been asleep for seven months.’ I was like, ‘Does my mom know?’
Dr Mainali said her team aggressively treated Brabson’s encephalitis while making sure medications did not worsen her condition.
Then, in April 2019, after four months under Mainali’s care, Kertisha started opening her eyes and responding to nurses.
Thinking back to that moment, her mum said:
[A doctor] said, Well, she’s woke up [sic]. Oh, my goodness, we just jumped up and down and screamed and nobody slept that morning.
Kertisha and Kertease say they are so grateful for the medical staff at Ohio State Wexner Medical Center, and that the mum-of-two owes her life to those doctors.
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Emma Rosemurgey is an NCTJ trained Journalist who started her career by producing The Royal Rosemurgey newspaper in 2004, which kept her family up to date with the goings on of her sleepy north east village. She graduated from the University of Central Lancashire in Preston and started her career in regional newspapers before joining Tyla (formerly Pretty 52) in 2017, and progressing onto UNILAD in 2019.