The ambulance rushed me straight to the Al Zahra hospital ICU in Dubai and that’s where the seizures started…
The nanny called Omar (my ex-husband) who was in Tunisia at the time but flew back with our daughter Leila, the next day. Who in turn called my brother Hisham, who was at the airport waiting to board to Greece but immediately changed his tickets for the whole family to Dubai. My dad was going out of his mind because he couldn’t get a visa from Malta because he didn’t have a European passport.
The diagnosis was – encephalitis / meningitis (complicated by a brain stem haemorrhage affecting the left mid brain, the pons and the cerebellum – what ever that means) leading to EPILEPSY! If you ask me, it was a good old fashioned stress related nervous breakdown.
Ann, Barry, and my dear friend Tarek joined the family crew in the induced coma vigil. It was bad.
That’s when the kindness rolled in. My brother set up a GoFundMe account which turned out to be the most successful to date in terms of funds gathered. People came in to donate plasma and dubizzlers formed a band for a charity concert, while in Rome they cooked up a charity dinner… A bunch of peeps also threw me a b-day party while I was in a coma! I was completely out of it so I had no idea who to be thankful to when this was all going on!
Also, luckily my dad got a Maltese passport so he could travel to Dubai – I don’t know how.
So the dream team had to make the decision of whether to take me home (to die) or air-ambulance me to Germany (International Neurological Institute) I strongly believe I had two guardian angels – my Mother (God rest her soul) and Dr Walter Bini, an epilepsy specialist found by Ann…
So you guessed it, I’m still here – they air-ambulanced my shaved head, intubated, comatose body off to Germany, matter of life or death, where I stayed for 8 months.
My dad, my rock aka “The General” was by my side every single day. And my family were around as much as they could.
I’m so grateful for all the visitors that took the time to come see me and messaged me to cheer me up. I won’t list them all in case I forget someone but you know who you are and thank you again and again! But a special shout out to Trevva and Paola who checked in EVERY day to get me through this rollercoaster of a ride…
Waking up from the coma is a moment I will never forget. I saw my brother’s smiling face and a big round ceiling light and I mouthed out ‘Hisham’ (cuz I still couldn’t talk cuz of the tracheotomy in my throat. I couldn’t speak or eat while that was still in).
When I woke up from that two months in coma I had a two-year memory gap so I thought my baby was still two but she was actually four. Thank God though I remembered I was divorced coz that could have been a bit awkward!
At least I remembered all my languages fluently…I spoke to the Doctors in English – one Doctor in particular in Italian, and the cleaner from Togo in French.
