Nobody expected Maria Lydia Hernandez Lopez
to awaken from her coma, and her doctors held little hope that the
twin girls she had been carrying for nearly six months would be
born alive.
But a month after Mrs. Lopez slipped into her coma — after her
family agreed to remove her life support and a priest had
administered last rites — the 25-year-old woman awoke.
Now, Mrs. Lopez is conscious and recovering and her twins are
healthy.
"It's been pretty remarkable ride," said her neurosurgeon,
John Frazee of the University of California, Los Angeles Medical
Center. "It's something that I have never seen happen in 17 years
— someone waking up who I thought was going to die."
In April, Mrs. Lopez began complaining of headaches. Doctors
blamed them on her pregnancy.
On April 24 she had trouble breathing and slipped into the coma
in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. It turned out that a
blood vessel had popped inside her brain.
Mrs. Lopez has a condition called arteriovenous malformation, in
which people are born with malformed or tangled arteries or veins
in the brain. Over time, the vessels can pressure neural tissue or
rupture. Her pregnancy did not contribute to the rupture, Frazee
said.
At UCLA, she underwent embolization, in which doctors inject a
glue-like substance to cut the blood flow to the tangled vessels.
"For three weeks she didn't get any better," Frazee said. "I
was having discussions with her family about the chances of her
recovering. I didn't think she would wake up to take care of
herself, let alone take care of her children."
Then in mid-May, the family was about to remove life support. As
a priest was giving last rites, Mrs. Lopez sputtered, coughed and
lurched in her bed. Doctors said it was an involuntary reflex, but
the family saw it as a sign from God.
"When I saw that, I knew she was not gone. That was a sign for
me," sister Adela Hernandez said. "That's where my faith came
in."
Intensive care continued, including a procedure to drain fluid
from her brain in early June, just before she slowly began to
regain consciousness and respond to simple commands.
Finally, on June 9, she awoke. Six days later, she delivered
twins, Arizandy Leann and Brianna Angel.
Mrs. Lopez, who underwent further brain surgery last week, is
slowly recovering and can communicate by wiggling her fingers,
Frazee said.
"If you were there from the beginning to now, it's just very
awesome," Ms. Hernandez said Wednesday. "It is a miracle. We just
thank God."
Comatose woman pregnant with twins awakens
