A mum knew that her son was “still with us” after he played with her wedding ring while he was coming out of a coma. Alun and Clare Evans had been doing some last-minute Christmas shopping when they received a phone call saying their 18-year-old son Tudur had been in a bad car accident.
The crash happened near to the family’s home and the couple rushed to the scene. They briefly managed to see Tuduer before he was lifted into the air ambulance and taken to The Walton Centre in Fazakerley, Liverpool, the Liverpool Echo reports.
“When we got there, it was clear Tudur’s car had hit a tree. He was being looked after by the medics and had been sedated, and he had had a big knock to the head,” Alun said. “This happened the day before Christmas Eve, so it was quite a shock, and a very different Christmas to what we imagined.”
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After he arrived at The Walton Centre, a specialist neurological hospital, Tudur was immediately put in an induced coma, so his body could settle while clinicians monitored his brain injuries, which included bleeds and swelling, causing pressure on his brain. He was closely monitored in case an emergency operation was needed, with the first 24 hours being crucial.
Alun continued: “He was ventilated and the doctors on ITU told us that he had experienced a subarachnoid haemorrhage, three intracerebral bleeds and bruising to the brain where his head had hit the car on impact with the tree.
"After a few days they tried reducing sedation, but this increased the pressure on his brain, which they measured with a pressure monitoring device that was fitted in his head."
The ITU team started to wean Tudur off sedation after eight days in hospital. It was when his mum Clare was holding his hand to try and stop him from pulling his cannulas out that he started playing with her wedding ring.
Alun said: "He got hold of her wedding ring with finger and thumb and started spinning it anti-clockwise up her finger until it spun no more and then pulled it off her finger as you would removing a nut off a bolt. He did this twice. This was the most hope we’d had since the accident as this was very relevant to him as a mechanic and made us realise that he was still with us.”
Tudur was taken off the ventilator on New Year’s Day and started breathing unaided. Even though he looked groggy and not fully awake, Alun could tell that he recognised his mum and dad.
He was moved to Sherrington Ward to recover further and went from strength to strength until, remarkably, being well enough to go home just a few weeks after staying in ITU.
Tudur said: “I was getting restless in the last week of being at The Walton Centre, but I understand now that they wanted to make absolutely sure I was ok before letting me go home. The week before I had been confusing dreams and reality, thinking I was in a petrol station waiting to get picked up, getting really frustrated that I wasn’t able to leave yet. But I appreciate now that I felt like this because of the head injury.”
Once home and around his friends and family, Tudur continued getting stronger and was back to work full time by mid-February, extraordinarily less than two months after the initial accident.
Tudur added: “I feel incredibly lucky because I know this isn’t the outcome for everyone who has injuries like this. All I have is a black spot in my memory for the time of the accident and the days afterwards, and for that I am truly grateful for all the care provided to me by all of the emergency services, The Walton Centre and its hardworking teams.”
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