American Sylvia Leroy lived a happy marriage with her husband Jeffrey and raised their three-year-old son Jeremiah. The couple decided to have another child, and there were no problems with conception. Leroy knew perfectly well that she was pregnant.
At the end of March 2020, already at the last stage of her pregnancy, the woman was admitted to the medical center of the University Hospital in Brownsville, where she worked as a nurse. There, experts planned to monitor the health of the expectant mother and prepare her for childbirth.
However, instead of helping, the American got a cold. At first, the symptoms were mild, but then they began to worsen rapidly. Sylvia was transferred to another hospital and connected to a ventilator. Little by little, the woman began to recover, and in mid-April, the device was already turned off, but it turned out that the worst was yet to come. A few days after Leroy switched to spontaneous breathing, her heart stopped.
According to the rules of the hospital, the doctors had to save the child first, so Sylvia was taken to the operating room, where the surgeon helped baby Esther to be born. Attempts to resuscitate her mother did not stop, which took a little more than eight minutes.
This is a dangerous line, beyond which, due to a lack of oxygen, cognitive changes can begin. If someone simply becomes twice as young after losing consciousness, then in the case of Sylvia, everything turned out to be more complicated. Doctors immediately realized that a long absence of oxygen left catastrophic damage in the patient’s brain, which affected almost everything: from Sylvia’s motor functions to her short-term memory.
The doctors did not foresee one thing – that everything would turn out to be even worse. Long-term memory was also affected. When Leroy woke up, her sister Liqing shared the good news.
I told her: “Sylvia, you were sick, you had a baby, but you did great with everything, remember?” And she just shook her head in response,” said Litsin.
Later it turned out that Sylvia does not remember at all that she was pregnant and planned to have a second child, so she was distrustful of what she heard. Ahead of the woman was a long period of rehabilitation and attempts to re-learn how to live without outside help. This was helped by funds raised by caring people through GoFundMe.
Although Leroy is still unable to walk, her family is already seeing progress – she has begun to move her arms and recognize people, and on July 30, doctors even allowed her to move home, where the familiar environment, they say, will help her restore her short-term memory.
