Photo: Khushnum Bhandari for The National
Back in 1991, 31-year-old Munira Abdulla asked her brother-in-law to drive her to school to pick up her 4-year-old son Omar. A bus crashed into the car and Abdulla slipped into a coma, from which she just recently woke up.
After 27 years spent in vegetative state, the woman from the United Arab Emirates is finally able to carry out a conversation with her son, say prayers and speak with other family members. The “modern-day miracle,” as The National calls this case, happened last year, in a clinic in Germany, when the woman started moving again.
Her recovery is still not complete – far from it. Since last year, Abdulla has made remarkable progress, to the point where she’s able to hold a short conversation in a familiar setting. However, her son is speaking out to urge others in similar situations not to lose hope.
“I never gave up on her because I always had a feeling that one day she will wake up,” Omar says. “I was four when the accident happened, and we used to live in Al Ain. That day, there was no bus at the school to take me home. My mother was sitting with me in the backseat. When she saw the crash coming she hugged me to protect me from the blow. There were no mobile phones and we could not call an ambulance. She was left like that for hours.”
Abdulla suffered extensive brain damage in the crash and she slipped into a coma almost immediately. She would then spend almost 3 decades being cared for at various hospitals, first in London and then back home. Eventually, the family received a grant from the state and she was taken to Germany for surgery and more treatment.
It was there that she woke up, when Omar was having an argument with someone from the staff and she perceived him to be in danger. Or so Omar believes. She called out his name and then the names of everyone else in the family, and within days, she was fully alert.
“I shared her story to tell people not to lose hope on their loved ones. Don’t consider them dead when they are in such a state,” Omar says. “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.”
Her recovery is still not complete – far from it. Since last year, Abdulla has made remarkable progress, to the point where she’s able to hold a short conversation in a familiar setting. However, her son is speaking out to urge others in similar situations not to lose hope.
“I never gave up on her because I always had a feeling that one day she will wake up,” Omar says. “I was four when the accident happened, and we used to live in Al Ain. That day, there was no bus at the school to take me home. My mother was sitting with me in the backseat. When she saw the crash coming she hugged me to protect me from the blow. There were no mobile phones and we could not call an ambulance. She was left like that for hours.”
Abdulla suffered extensive brain damage in the crash and she slipped into a coma almost immediately. She would then spend almost 3 decades being cared for at various hospitals, first in London and then back home. Eventually, the family received a grant from the state and she was taken to Germany for surgery and more treatment.
It was there that she woke up, when Omar was having an argument with someone from the staff and she perceived him to be in danger. Or so Omar believes. She called out his name and then the names of everyone else in the family, and within days, she was fully alert.
“I shared her story to tell people not to lose hope on their loved ones. Don’t consider them dead when they are in such a state,” Omar says. “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.”
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