"How Do I Explain to My Son About Mom?" Woman in Vegetative State After Childbirth
The woman«s husband says she may be disabled for life following a difficult childbirth.
At the end of last year, a 39-year-old woman was admitted to the maternity ward of the Urenskaya Central District Hospital. She underwent a cesarean section, during which serious complications arose. As the woman«s husband, Ivan Smirnov, told NN.RU, during the operation Ksenia experienced clinical death. During that time, the woman»s brain was severely damaged, and now the once healthy woman is in a vegetative state.
Ksenia was scheduled for a planned operation on 25 November. She promised to write to her husband as soon as she could, but Ivan became worried when he received no news from his wife. The man contacted the hospital and was told that Ksenia was in intensive care.
As Ivan recounted, the operation was performed under general anesthesia, during which the woman in labor experienced clinical death—it lasted about 10 minutes. On the same day, Ksenia was transferred to the Semashko Hospital in Nizhny Novgorod, where she remains to this day.
According to the man, Ksenia is in a vegetative state. They want to transfer her to Moscow for treatment. However, according to Ivan, he is being prepared for the fact that in this condition, his wife will live out the rest of her life.
«Now I have a 5-year-old child and a newborn baby in my arms. I am essentially a single father. And I don»t know what to do with her. There«s a high probability that I won»t be able to save her. <…> I don«t know how to explain to my older son what happened to mom. She didn»t die, but now she is sick forever,« Ivan told NN.RU.
The regional Ministry of Health is now conducting an inspection. They also added that the issue of providing assistance to the injured woman is now under control. The question of the possibility of transferring her to the Federal Research and Clinical Center for Rehabilitation and Intensive Care in Moscow is being resolved.
