A woman who was given only a five per cent chance of surviving Covid and gave birth to her baby boy before entering a coma has said the “experience taught her how to live”.
Grace Victory was struck so severely by the deadly virus that she spent three months in a medically induced coma fighting for her life.
Doctors thought the 31-year-old YouTube blogger from High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, wouldn't survive after she went into cardiac arrest and were left baffled by her "miracle" recovery.
However, despite the horrific series of events, Grace and her baby boy Cyprus are now both happy and healthy.
When Grace was seven months pregnant in December 2020, she began to feel unwell.
When she went to hospital, Cyprus wasn’t due until February, months later, but her oxygen levels were really low and she had to have an emergency C-section to deliver him on Christmas Eve.
But things went downhill from there and only two days later on Boxing Day, she agreed to be put into a coma.
She told The BBC : “When I think back to the birth, I don't feel like it was traumatic at all. It was very calm, very chilled, and I remember briefly touching him. Then the decision was made that I needed to go to intensive care.”
She recalled being confused when her partner Lee was crying and as she confessed to not realising how serious her condition was.
During her coma she described having a “very long, weird dream” where she spoke to God and saw a green light.
But after a month she suffered a cardiac arrest that she said left her dead for five minutes before medics brought her back.
She finally woke up in March 2021, months after she first went to hospital and said consultants described her recovery as a “miracle” and said: “‘You will be talked about for years to come because you shouldn't be alive'.”
Even though Grace emerged with no brain damage, she was then faced with the uphill battle to relearn how to walk.
On top of that, after missing so much of Cyprus' early life she said she was in “mourning” after missing his first cry, first bath and more.
Even after emerging from her coma their time together was still limited and it wasn’t until she was put in a rehab hospital that she could spend longer with him.
Doctors and specialists were left in disbelief by her amazing recovery. The only marks of her traumatic experience is a slightly huskier voice due to scarring and a lack of movement in one thumb.
Grace took the decision to shave her hair off before she was discharged. She found it “cleansing” cutting her hair off and said it had been left matted by her time in hospital.
She credited her relationship with god and her faith for parts of her recovery but also said she was left “quite angry” and disconnected following all she suffered.
Then, in January this year she caught Covid again and was left terrified and freaking out. But due to the protection of the virus she only had a runny nose.
And now Grace and Lee are readying themselves to welcome a second child, a baby girl, into their family.
