Hi,
I was in a coma this year in January for 8 weeks.
I tried to kill myself which initially caused to me to go into acute respiratory failure with a gcs score of THREE.
because of this I had to be proned (lay on my front for a very long time, with a tracheostomy in place)
This caused a serious brachial plexus injury which caused my nerves in my spinal cord/neck to be severed, so now I cannot use my left hand to grip, it's completely lost feeling but is so painful that often I'm withering in pain. My right hand is functional to an extent but still very numb and painful.
As I was very difficult to get an arterial line in, they put one in my femoral artery (groin), however, the staff there didn't use aseptic techniques and caused a central line blood stream infection, which then led to my leg turning gangrene, which I was very lucky to not lose my leg BUT as they performed surgical debridement, they ripped out a major nerve in my leg. (For context, they could fit an adult sized hand right on it)
By the time they caught the initial infection it was too late and sepsis set in. I then had multiple organ failure and was end stage kidney failure. By miracle, my kidneys recovered enough to come off diyalsis (however I'm now in stage 3a kidney disease)
Anyway, I survived and I'm very lucky but my leg was numb from hip to ankle. I have around 60% feeling back but as I have severe nerve damage I'm in agony all the time, constantly crying over it and just wish it would end.
I have a F2F appointment with my pain clinic consultant on Friday as I have been on morphine patch, and a range of nerve controlling pain killers.
For more context I was in a coma for the same reason in 2020 and was left with lasting nerve pain ( to which I recovered around 85%)
Would it be reasonable to perhaps bring up the possibility of having regional pain syndrome?
Sorry for the long post, I just wanted to give enough context as possible