Never Broken

by Hannah Campbell

  Initially, I was in a bay by myself, but then some poor soul was put in the bed next to me while I was in the coma and died. The Army moved Mum, Dad and Jamie into a nearby hotel as in all honesty they probably thought I was going to follow closely behind so they wanted to make them as comfortable as possible as the levels of stress they were experiencing were horrendous. I’m just so thankful Milly wasn’t there to see me during this period. She was so little she wouldn’t have understood what was going on and it would have been an awful environment for her to be in.

  By day three I’d become swollen. My wedding ring became tight and I was put on dialysis to try and cool my blood as my temperature raged. The doctor agreed there was a small improvement but I wasn’t out of the woods as I’d developed pneumonia in my left lung.

  Five days in there was the first sign of hope. The consultant came in and told Mum and Dad she was ‘cautiously optimistic’ and that the levels of infection were improving. My dialysis machine was removed but the ventilator remained. During Mum and Dad’s visiting time I began to move my hand and chew on the tubes in my mouth. Dad immediately rang Jamie, who rushed to my bedside. Later in the afternoon, while my bed was being changed, I began to move my head and legs, initially waving my arms a little, but then I became agitated. Apparently everyone was calling my name, desperately trying to get me to surface. I began to respond to Mum’s voice and apparently each time she spoke to me I’d open my eyes, but they were glazed and unfocused. Clearly on some level I was registering she was there and speaking to me. I know this because Mum kept a diary for the entire ten days. One of the medical staff suggested to her it might be a way of coping with what was going on and trying to get her head around the fact that her only daughter, me, was fighting again with all her strength to live. She also hoped I’d be able to read it if I recovered and wanted me to know what had happened during my lost days, not only to me, but also Milly.

  I have read the diary but only once as it was so painful to read. It made me realise just how difficult it was for everyone around me, particularly being a mother myself. My aunt was also good at texting photos of Milly, including her with the school’s newborn chicks, which she was able to show Jamie. It was a relief to find out she had been having a fantastic time with our extended family and her life hadn’t been touched by the horror of what was going on.

  There was a special area of the hospital which military families could use, where Mum chatted to the other parents, who all supported each other. You could go over there, make cups of tea, cook a meal and also do your laundry; staff were constantly there to provide help and support, too. You’d ring a bell to go in, give the name of the Military casualty and a member of staff would let you in with a smile, asking, ‘Would you like to talk or is there anything we can do to help?’

  Initially my dad had asked the doctor: ‘What can we do to help?’ The answer was simple: ‘Support each other.’ So when visiting times ended, they did all sorts of things to distract from the stress: visit an art gallery, have a picnic in the park or even taking a walk. An activity was planned for every day. Later, when they’d come back, they’d tell me what they’d been doing, trying to coax me from my coma. At times Mum admits she almost enjoyed her afternoons out, but hidden underneath the laughter was the knowledge that I was lifeless, back at the hospital.

  On day six it was a case of two steps forward, three steps back. In the morning I obeyed an instruction from a nurse to squeeze her hand, then I began to move when I coughed, pulling faces, chewing on my tube and flailing my arms about in the air. It was distressing, but the doctors tried to reassure everyone that it was perfectly normal. The consultant explained that there is a Glasgow Scale for a depth of coma and I had been at three, which was the deepest.

  While all this was going on in the real world I was living another life in my coma. This sounds absolutely surreal but they say that the mind is capable of many incredible things and very little is actually fully understood. After what I experienced I believe this. I vividly remember starting my life again: in my mind I watched myself being born, growing up, getting married and having lots of kids. It was like the most vivid and brightest dream ever and I was starring in it like a home movie of a life I’d never had. I remember being aware I was dying in my dream world and accepting it.

  While I was in this state, doctors had decided that I would benefit from an experimental drug designed to make the veins more elastic in order to improve blood flow around my body. They needed my family’s consent, prepared to grasp any glimmer of light in what was an awful, pitch-black situation. The drug worked by making your arteries and veins more elastic and cutting down the strain on your body. This in turn helped the body to heal itself. The doctors explained to Mum, Dad and Jamie that the Military, as a matter of course, never allowed experimental drugs to be used on soldiers so the decision had to be made as a family unit. Between them they all agreed I should have it: they just wanted me back and any chance of achieving that was a chance worth taking. The drug was administered straight away and it may well have saved my life.

  The first sign that things were improving was when the machinery around me began to be removed. First, the breathing machinery, then the syringe drivers began to reduce in number. Mum had learned the signs to look for before they went back to the wards. Although I wasn’t totally out of the woods yet, things were looking more optimistic and it seemed I had turned a corner. When I began to wake from the coma the first thing I did was attempt to smile at Mum, although it apparently looked more like a rictus grimace when she mentioned Milly. My throat was so sore from the machines and sometimes I managed forty-one breaths a minute, other times just sixteen. I only know this as medical staff told my mum and she told me later; at the time I was very confused, drifting in and out of consciousness.

  At one point I told everyone to ‘shut up’ and I seem to have believed I’d been sectioned; I was totally unaware that the white walls were those of a hospital room. But my first real memory is of people washing me and I remember feeling irritable and trying to roll to get away from them – I just wanted to be left alone. I remember my mum and Jamie leaning over me in bed and saying to me: ‘Hannah, you’ve been in a coma.’

  I was so disorientated that I started to get really cross with them. ‘No, I haven’t! What the hell are you talking about?’ I slurred angrily. I was just so cross, I thought everyone was lying to me. All my Mum and Jamie wanted to do was kiss and hug me but I was having none of it. I was so disorientated that I barely knew my own name. Although I was rude to Mum my main rage was directed at Jamie. I told him: ‘Get me out of here now!’ and ‘Go and get the car and park outside and drive me home!’ The irony of the whole situation was I could barely move, let alone walk, as my body was so weak and all my muscles had wasted away after spending ten days in a coma. I had so little strength I couldn’t actually lift my own hand up to my face. In fact I was so poorly for the two days after the op that I had to get people to scratch my face if I had an itch and even blow my nose for me.

  I finally came round fully after ten days and my behaviour was totally inappropriate and very strange. It was as if all my natural social graces had gone. No one was sure if I was ever going to be Hannah again; I was just saying weird things. Even though my mum kept saying to me: ‘Hannah, you are in Intensive Care’, I thought I had been on holiday on a cruise. I insisted that my huge yacht had been bobbing and that I was feeling seasick. On one occasion I called a consultant over as I decided I wanted to get up even though I was still attached to goodness knows what. I issued an imperious order: ‘Just run along over there and do you see that wheelchair? Can you bring it over here for me.’ It was someone else’s wheelchair firstly. And secondly, you don’t speak to a consultant like that! He took it terribly well. I suppose he must have been used to this sort of thing, although Mum apologised profusely for my behaviour. Why I thought I’d appropriate someone else’s wheelchair is beyond me!

  I flirted shamelessly with anyone,
whether it was a nurse, doctor or another patient – it was as if all my inner filters and good manners had been switched off. Loads of crazy things came out of my mouth. One nurse was asked: ‘Why did I have no toes on my other foot?’ He replied: ‘You do have toes.’ I then told Dad I had a fancy chair that goes up and down stairs (referring to my trolley wheels) and I begged them to tell everyone I was not a looney. Perhaps the most poignant thing I said was: ‘I can’t sleep. I’m frightened if I sleep, it will happen again.’ All the while Mum continued to log everything in the diary – while they’d been warned this might happen, it didn’t ease the shock, though.

  On the second day I told Mum: ‘It was really busy in here last night. They were stacking the stretchers one on top of another. There have been loads of casualties.’ Mum later told me she looked over at one of the doctors, who discretely shook his head. It was just another bizarre hallucination. Another time I was also obsessed with dead bodies being stacked up by my bed – which of course also hadn’t happened. I told my dad I wasn’t able to sleep because I’d been on an aeroplane all night. When he gently tried to correct me and tell me there was no aeroplane, I told him to get out of my sight and get out of my room, so he had to leave. I was genuinely slightly mad. And because people gently tried to pull me back to reality I became convinced everyone was having me on and they were all conspiring against me. The fact is my mind was so muddled from the coma and what I’d been through it wasn’t making any sense of anything.

  At one point, as I was becoming more lucid, the hospital arranged for a physiotherapist to come and see me. A nurse said: ‘Do you want to have a wash before he comes?’ Just the thought of feeling clean again at that moment was heavenly. All my armpit hair had grown, my hair was matted and my legs were covered in thick hair as well. She gave me a full bed bath, taking about an hour. And she did everything for me: shaved my armpits, gently washed my scalp. On the one hand it was so degrading but on another I simply didn’t care as I just wanted to feel human again. I was still being fed through a tube, so I had a rectal tube fitted as well – basically the food was going in a tube at one end and coming out of a tube at the other. And so the nurses decided to remove that before I saw the physiotherapist just to make it more comfortable for me.

  When the physiotherapist did show up he pulled back the curtains around my bed and I saw a young, attractive bloke. My heart sank. ‘Right, Hannah, we’re going to get you standing up,’ he said (he had a walking frame with him). He then started to help me get out of the bed with one of the nurses. The effort of standing up was monumental. Every single cell in my body was screaming in agony but I was determined to get upright. The worst thing was I had only been standing for a split second when unfortunately nature took its course and I actually had an accident and soiled myself on the hospital floor. My face was scarlet.

  I thought: ‘Oh, my God, I’ve just stood up for the first time, which is amazing, but I’ve shat myself in the process and in front of a man!’ Thankfully he left the room and the nurses cleaned up the floor and me. I just kept saying, ‘Oh, my God, I can’t believe I’ve done that! I’m so sorry.’ There was a part of me that knew I would be able to laugh about it at some point in my life but I also knew it wouldn’t be for quite a while. He had another go about an hour later and it was the most effort I’ve ever made in my life to stand upright again. Consequently, lightning struck twice! I was so mortified, I shouted at him, begging him: ‘Don’t ever come back and see me ever again!’ – and he didn’t. He actually fled the room. I must have terrified him. The whole thing was just awful; you lose your pride and your dignity. I was so grateful to the medical staff and people around me and now I know it didn’t really matter.

  Thank God the hallucinations and crazy behaviour only lasted for three days. Although my family had been warned that this would happen, they were understandably anxious they weren’t going to get me back. Four days later I was moved on to the main military ward and because I was the only female, I was given a side room so I had a bit more privacy. I also had a special ‘floating’ airbed to stop me getting bed sores. The remote control was a bit dicky but it’s the most uncomfortable bed I’ve ever slept on.

  As a result of my coma my face had swollen up, pushing my eyes slightly out of their sockets. My lips were huge, swollen and covered in sores. I was unrecognisable. When I saw my appearance I gasped. I looked like an alien with these buglike eyes and hugely swollen lips and cheeks. The back of my hands were so swollen they looked like they had half-tennis balls under the skin. My body was literally double its size due to the build up of fluid because I’d been in the coma for so long it hadn’t had a chance to move anywhere.

  Mum and Dad spoke to one of the doctors and asked if I was going to look like that forever. He said, ‘Look like what?’ So they showed him a picture of me from a holiday a few years previously. It was like two different people. Thankfully, he assured them it would go within a few weeks.

  As the days passed, the main ward was like a breath of fresh air. It was as if I was rejoining life again. People popped in and out of my room all the time and my recovery was fast. I felt invigorated and despite being in pain I was excited and just so thankful to still be alive. From then on I started getting physio every day and was taught how to get in and out of my wheelchair as I hadn’t had my prosthetics fitted yet due to all the trauma of the coma. Every hour I felt a little stronger and more positive; I felt I could do anything. I don’t know where it came from in my brain but I started thinking to myself: ‘I’ve got rid of that leg now, I’m going to be able to run again.’ I hadn’t even got out of my hospital bed yet but I felt the world was full of possibilities instead of dead ends.

  ‘What can I do that’s a really big challenge?’ I thought, for I needed a goal. And then I decided: ‘I know, I’m going to run the London Marathon.’ I loved watching it on TV every year and so I decided to do it for the charity Blesma: The British Limbless Ex-Service Men’s Association, an amazing national charity who support servicemen and women when they have lost limbs. Their representatives had come to visit me in my hospital bed. The charity has loads of activities to encourage the limbless to lead normal lives, including skiing, scuba diving, ski-bob and horse-riding. Nothing is off-limits. They also advise and help ex-military with anything from adapting their homes to which benefits they are eligible for, as well as giving guidance and advice for the rest of your life.

  So when everyone was around my bed during that evening’s visiting time I said: ‘Hang on, I’ve got something to tell you all.’ It was my mum, dad, Milly and Jamie, who all immediately went quiet. And then I announced: ‘I’m going to do the London Marathon in 2012!’ They just said: ‘Yeah, alright.’ I’d been hallucinating so I think at first they thought it was just another thing I was saying under the influence of drugs.

  A week after I’d come out of the coma my best friend Nikki was allowed to be the first non-family member to come in and see me. I had expected her to be shocked when she saw me. The first thing out of her mouth was, ‘Oh God, Hannah, you haven’t shaved your legs! I can’t have you sitting here with hairy legs!’ Only Nikki could say something like that after everything I’d been through. It made me burst out laughing – it was actually the first time I’d laughed and felt like the old me. She got a little bowl from one of the nurses, some soap and a Bic razor and set to work. My stump had actually healed brilliantly as I had been in the coma for so long it had been rested. She shaved my right leg, no problem but obviously I didn’t have part of my left leg anymore, so she shaved all down the bit of leg I did have and when she got to my stump, which still had staples in it at this point, she carefully went round each one. Nikki is so squeamish normally, but it was such an incredibly kind, loving gesture that even now I don’t think I can tell her how much that meant to me at that moment in my life.

  Then, after she’d done that, one of the nurses came into the room and said: ‘We’re going to remove all your staples now.’ Nikki held my hand th
roughout the whole thing. It was a massive moment for me as it was the first time I’d seen my leg properly hair-free and without any of the ugly staples in it. I was so glad Nikki was there with me. But I looked down at it and thought: ‘Right, this is me. This is how it is now and I’m cracking on with life and I’m going to squeeze every last opportunity out of it!’ I had tears in my eyes: I was so happy I’d been given another chance at life and I was grabbing it. As we sat talking I said to her: ‘Do you know what Nikki?’ I think I need a girly holiday after all of this. And she said: ‘Well, why don’t we book somewhere? Where do you want to go?’ and I immediately said: ‘I’ve always wanted to go to the Bahamas.’ So there and then we said we’d do it.

  I knew everything would be OK and I was going to see Milly again shortly. We had made a conscious decision as a family not to tell her about the coma as I didn’t want her to be scared about anything. Even now, years later, she still doesn’t know anything about it; I just wanted to protect her, like any mother would. Today I’m at peace with the fact she’s going to find out and I’ve decided to give her a copy of this book, with a personal message inside the cover, to she can read my story for herself and share it at Show And Tell at school. Because I’m not that sick shadow of my former self anymore, This is something that happened to me in her past, whereas back then, it was something we were living through.

  Nikki picked me up on discharge day from the hospital. Normally I would have gone straight to Headley Court for rehabilitation. Because I’d been so ill, I had to go home to my parents’ house in Cumbria for a few weeks of recuperation first while Jamie packed up the house in Ireland, ready to move back to the UK. He was transferred to the Royal Electrical Mechanical Engineers, who are an amazing unit, while I was transferred to the Army’s long-term sick list, so I was no longer attached to a unit. But it meant I would get all the help I needed to set me on the road to recovery. I’m impatient and it was annoying as I wanted to start straight away at Headley, but I was just thankful I was alive. The Army had arranged transport to take me to my parents. Milly would be there as well and I couldn’t wait to see her.