Munira Abdulla woke up from a coma after almost three decades. A resident of UAE spent 28 long years in many hospitals and doctors had lost hope of her recovery. But, the now 60-year-old Munira, regained consciousness last year in a hospital in Germany. She had met with an accident back in 1991 when she was 32 years old.
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According to the reports, the woman could recite verses of the Quran but with a little difficulty.
Her son Omar Webair, 32 said, ¡°I never gave up on her because I always had a feeling that one day she will wake up.¡±?
Mr Webair says that he remembers the accident as though it were yesterday. He was four when the accident took place. The family lived in Al Ain and the day of the incident is still fresh in their heads.?
At 4 pm when Munira picked up her son Omar, the school bus crashed into them.?
¡°I was in KG1 and, that day, there were no available buses at the school to take me home,¡± says Omar.
¡°My mother was sitting with me in the back seat. When she saw the crash coming she hugged me to protect me from the blow,¡± Mr Webair added.?
Omar came out with some bruises on the head but unfortunately, Ms Abdullah suffered a brain injury.?
¡°There were no mobile phones and we could not call an ambulance for help. She was left like that for hours,¡± said Mr Webair. Ms Abdulla was then taken to a nearby hospital, from where she had to be transferred to London, looking at the gravity of the situation.?
There she was declared to be in a vegetative state ¡ª completely unresponsive but able to sense pain. Doctors diagnosed a minimally conscious state - a severe impairment of consciousness, characterized by minimal preservation of conscious towards the patient and their surroundings.
She then came back to Al Ain. She was fed through a tube and also underwent physiotherapy to keep her muscles healthy.?
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Her son used to visit the hospital on a daily basis and would sit with her for hours. He knew when she was in pain, just by looking at her expressions.?
¡°To me she was like gold, the more time passed by the more valuable she became," he said. "I never regretted it. I believe that, because of my support for her, God saved me from bigger troubles.¡±
Ms Abdullah had to be moved from hospital to hospital in the UAE. The crown prince also heard of the situation and offered the family a grant for a comprehensive multidisciplinary programme in Germany.
"We did not even ask for the grant and it was offered to us. I am grateful to Sheikh Mohamed [bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi] for that. In general, our leaders are always supportive in such situations and we are thankful for it."
Doctors tried really hard treating Ms Abdullah through a number of surgeries.?
¡°Our primary goal was to grant her fragile consciousness the opportunity to develop and prosper within a healthy body, just like a delicate plant which needs good soil to grow,¡± said Dr Ahmad Ryll, a neurology specialist and Ms Abdullah¡¯s doctor in Germany.
She was given medication to improve her wakefulness, sleep rhythm and drive, he said. Soon, because of the therapy, she began to consciously perceive her children as well as the doctor.
¡°I told the doctors I was expecting her to start talking again, they told me: ¡®you are running wild with your imagination, we are only doing rehabilitation to fix her quality of life¡¯,¡± said Mr Webair.
In June 2018, some unexpected happened when she started to move a little sensing her son was at some risk due to some misunderstanding at the hospital.?
¡°She was making strange sounds and I kept calling the doctors to examine her, they said everything was normal,¡± Mr Webair said.
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¡°Then three days later I woke up to the sound of someone calling my name."
¡°It was her! She was calling my name, I was flying with joy; for years I have dreamt of this moment, and my name was the first word she said.¡±
According to the reports, she was also calling the names of her siblings, ¡°and everybody who she expected to be around her; when she was screaming it was like she was reliving the accident and then woke up.¡±
It was a miracle when she became more aware and responsive and her situation got a lot better.?
¡°Now she can tell us where she is feeling pain, and I can have conversations with her if she is interested in the topic,¡± Mr Webair said.
¡°She sometimes wakes me up to recite prayers with her, she would give me the topic and once I start with the prayer she continues the lines herself.¡±
Back in Abu Dhabi, she stays with her family now and is given physiotherapy on a regular basis as she still needs it to improve her sitting posture and to prevent any other muscle contractions.
Her son also makes sure to take her out to the Grand Mosque on a wheelchair.
¡°All those years the doctors told me she was a hopeless case, and that there was no point of the treatment I was seeking for her, but whenever in doubt I put myself in her place and did whatever I could to improve her condition.¡±
¡°The reason I shared her story is to tell people not to lose hope on their loved ones; don¡¯t consider them dead when they are in such a state,¡± concluded Mr Webair.