'I woke up with a different person': a New Yorker spent a month in a coma because of COVID-19

Paramedic FDNY told doctors that she could no longer breathe on her own. After that, she fell into a coma for a month. Now she woke up and told that her outlook on life has changed dramatically. About the changes that happened to her, told the publication Daily News.

On March 21, 34-year-old Christell Cadet fell into a medical coma as she battled for her life with a coronavirus infection. She fainted outside her home in Queens after the end of her work shift. The girl regained consciousness only last week and discovered that the whole world is now radically different. “I woke up as a completely different person,” the Cadet said in a still weak voice. “I’m not the person I was before it started. Mentally it makes me see things differently. It makes me appreciate life in a different way. "

Now she is learning to talk and walk again, and her mother, a nurse from Queens, feeds her and helps her to get around. “You don't know how bad things can actually be,” said Cadet, who uses an oxygen tank to breathe. "I didn't know things could be that bad."

Kristel was hospitalized seven weeks ago after family members found her crawling on her hands and knees, struggling to catch her breath. They took the girl to the hospital, where they helped her, the test result for COVID-19 was positive.

Her last memory before spending a month in a coma was the realization that she needed immediate help. “I kept telling the staff that I had breathing problems and that I was too tired to breathe on my own and that I needed to be hooked up to a ventilator,” she recalls. "After that, they put me into a coma."

Over the next month, the Cadet lay unconscious in a hospital, connected to an apparatus supplying her oxygen. All this time, members of her family were worried that she could die alone. As the oxygen level fell, it was connected to an extacorporal membrane oxygenation apparatus (ECMO), which oxidized blood outside the body and then returned it.

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Then things got worse. The girl's father was very worried that he would never see his daughter again. As a result, he suffered a stroke. In early April, he partially lost his ability to speak. Today a 65-year-old man is also in the process of recovery. “He was very tense due to the fact that we could not see her and did not know what the next step would be and whether she would come back to us,” explained mother Christelle Jesse.

Over time, the girl’s condition improved. The oxygen level in her blood increased, she was disconnected from ECMO, and then from the ventilator. She opened her eyes while her mother looked at her through FaceTime.

“It shows that Christel and the other paramedics are tough,” said Oren Barzilay, president of the FDNY EMS (Bureau of Emergency Medicine). He noted that four EMS members have died from the coronavirus. “Her plight was extremely worrying for us, as she is loved by all of us. It is a great relief to hear that she is much better, ”he said.

After the Cadet gave an interview from her hospital bed, she got worse that day.

Now Christelle feels much better and is happy that she is finally at home. However, she wonders what the future holds for her. “Of course I'm afraid of a relapse,” she said. "But I am very happy to be where I am today."