Can a medical induced coma cause long term memory loss and speech disparities ?

[Aprilg]

I have a question, I had surgery and well, they ended up giving me to much meds and basically put me in a medical induced coma, ever since then I have memory loss (I can read something and 10 min later, not remember what I read) I also have nightmares of what I thought I heard while I was under and sometimes I go to say a word and can't pronounce it right for anything! It's been almost 3 years and it's not getting better. Help is this common

[BBDEBS]

Yep! It’s so very common! My brain is like Swiss cheese sometimes!

Don’t worry, just explain to people you’ve had a critical illness and it’s a marathon recovery not a sprint x

[stevet11753]

I'm the same, swiss cheese brain, flaky memory: forgetting simple words and having to re-read book passages that I've forgotten.

[ICUBMcoma]

I have that along with the memory and speech issuses, I also find that I have weakend facial muscles and drool on the side of my face that the breathing TUBE was on! Diagnosed with Bacterial Meningitis 12/26/16. went into a diabetic coma on the car trip back to nj from nc. Chilton induced coma from 12/26-1/04/17 In the ICU. Total muscular atrophy, was paralyzed top to toe! Lungs, bladder, etc etc etc. the brain is a muscle. I was in Hospital settings from Christmas to Easter. April 13,2017- 15 weeks on a roller coaster learning how to take a step, regain function in most of my body, now almost 11 months into this journey and 7 months out of the Hospitals I’m doing bettering but I still have a ways to go! However at night it comes rushing back at me. I dream about the Hospitals all the time! Monday I start with a new therapist hopefully she will be able to help!

[Lynn2010]

Short answer is yes. In my case it’s still the same nearly 7 years later, it’s my new normal. My short term memory is rubbish. I can’t remember what I had for breakfast, if I took my meds’ etc. I also struggle with finding the correct word, it’s like give us a clue in my house. I had the children in hysterics with me trying to describe mustard as I couldn’t pull the word mustard from my brain I actually asked for the yellow stuff you put on hotdogs.

[stevet11753 in reply to Lynn2010]

This is so familiar Lynn! I have to stick to a rigid routine or else forget to do things like taking my meds. I once couldn't remember the word for sausage; imagine us trying to describe a hotdog! 😊

[Sepsur]

Swiss cheese brain too - I struggle to retrace methods of doing things that I have known all my life

[Mijmijkey74]

Hi Aprilg - I was in an induced coma not expected to survive last January 17/18th 2018 for 8 days. Woken up paralazed couldn't feel my legs or see them under the blanket as they sat me up slightly, nurse saw my panic and through blanket off to show me they were still there. My muscle wastage was so severe, they couldn't be seen under the blanket and I thought they had been amputated or I was parallazed. I finally left hospital on 2nd of feb 2018 but since then nothing seems right anymore. My vocal cords were damaged from intubation I assume, my voice extremely weak, gravelly and hoarse. Took a huge amount of effort to force out sound, even now 14- 15 months later I'm struggling, voice is getting better but I can't talk for long periods of time, it still requires effort to talk, it doesn't come naturally anymore. My brain finds it difficult finding the right words and forming them, I'm so aware of my mouth and tongue, my tongue especially I feel moves differently in my mouth now to form words, and my son notices a delay when I speak and that although my voice is relatively the same, he says I sound different, which I'm aware of also. My behaviour or rather I feel my personality is different " can't really describe what it is though" there is just a delay in my speech and thinking, a pause. Items become things because although I see what the item is, I can't get the word out, and when I finally have got the word, the conversation has moved on. Recently had a MRI to look for brain damage due to that, it came back normal, but I'm convinced they didn't check it properly or have missed something, or because I wasn't talking when the mri was done, the issue didn't show up. I know and feel there is something wrong with my speech and thought process but also aware it could even now still be just a part of the recovery process which in 2 years or more may be totally gone. The tests they did on me when woken from my coma told them no cognitive impairment, but there deffinitely was impairment because I couldn't talk hardly, walk, brush hair, teeth, write, read, tell the time, comprehend a lot of what people said to me, would fall flat on my face in bed when they finally sent me to a ward and couldn't get myself up again, it was the girl in the next bed who had to pull me upright again as nurses didn't bother on that horrible ward. I would have been left in the position I fell in for hours otherwise. Had to learn to walk again with one of those old peoples walker things with wheels, the word for it I can't recall, then finally crutches which were then swapped for a walking stick as couldn't use them.

Even now I'm not discharged from cardiology as an outpatient all these months later, and recently found some paperwork from hospital which tells I was supposed to have been seen in 6 months by the cardiologist with a view to discharge me if all well. That 6 months was march. I found the paperwork in april. The treatment I've received has been very sloppy in my areas, my own doctor after discharge from hospital as an outpatient received a letter from the hospital telling her I'd spent a short period of time in hospital on a ward. She was so shocked and disgusted with the hospital saying she could have given me wrong medication or treated me wrongly, as they didn't tell her I'd been in an induced coma, had a massive asthma attack, been in icu ventilated, died briefly before ventilation but heart started itself without need for paddles, that I had almost died twice during coma, and my survival wasn't expected. No mention of the medications I was on, my muscle wastage and having to relearn walking, writing, speech, reading, telling time, no mention of the heart failure I had either or the damage to my heart and lungs and that I'd now been left with brittle asthma. My doctor was so shocked by my appearance and insensed by their lack of proffesionalism that she phoned them up whilst I was in her room as she wanted me to hear exactly what she had to say to them, and exactly what she thought of them. They were put in their place and very apologetic, admitting they had failed me badly. I don't have anybody to talk to about what happened to me, no friends who care enough, I don't go out as in just to town or for a wander as still suffering the effects of severe muscle wastage, walking is difficult, and painful, my feet feel like flippers, as if they are loose on my ankles. I can however cycle which is great, but it impacts my breathing, and never seem to have enough inhalers, always running out. They only prescribe me one reliver at a time dispite me telling them I need more than one. Everything has changed, my whole life is upside down, and not sure it will ever at my age "44 now" get better. I weigh only just over 5 stone now, look emaciated, skin like a 95 year olds and I'm not married either, feel so alone, and that nobody will ever want me now. My whole body is wasted. I keep thinking about hanging myself, but don't because of my son, otherwise I would. I just don't want to be here anymore, can't understand other than for my son why I even survived when I wasn't expected to. I stay in my house alone all the time, my illness related to mould spores on my lungs caused by the horredous damp and black mould in our house which I've had to go back into. My parents are my landlords, they don't understand my energy levels extremely low and recovery are all still ongoing, asthma is bad, and can hardly breathe a lot of the time, yet they are going on at me to sort out this house so they can repair it, but my mum started on at me about it the day I went back to their house for a short time after discharge from the ward about me getting back in here and sorting out the house. I couldn't walk hardly then, dressing myself took all day if I managed at all without slipping into exhaustion from attempting to dress and falling into deep sleep, had high temperature, and loads of other issues. Yet because I was finally out of hospital my mum decided I was now fully recovered to get back into the house to start sorting it out, the house that had contributed to my illness and expected death. Now I'm in that house, and my health is going back down hill. Nobody cares, nobody calls me of my family, it's going just how it was before I ended up in hospital. My mum not that long ago was rolling her eyes at me about my ill health and coma, saying it was years ago that happened, as if I'm making it up, or putting it on, like it never really happened at all, even though she is the only one who could come and see me in icu in the coma, on life support all wired and tubed up. She said that happened years ago, it was even 12 months ago at the time. And she has been told my recovery will take a long time. I get only negativity from my family, yet when I do have hospital appointments I'm met with loads of positivity at how well I'm doing even now, as it was never expected I would survive, or if I did survive it would be brain damaged, seriously ill needing 24/7 hour care incapable of doing anything ever again for myself. So that I am able to do things like walk and talk at what they still consider to be so soon afterwards fills them with joy and positivity for me. I wish my family could realise this, realise the struggles I face and overcome daily, how me cycling to their house to see my son who lives with them because of the damp and black mould at my own insistance and from asthma nurses insistance in the past that he not be in this house, and really that neither of us be in this house, but can't move out, no money. I wish they would realise, understand just what it takes from me to cycle all the way to their house to visit, then all the way back to my own house, and that sometimes I'm just to unwell to make those journeys, and saying things to me as my mum does that I only see my son when it suits me is just a horribly insensitive thing to say and imply. It isn't when it suits me, if it was what suited me, he wouldn't be with them, and we wouldn't be seperated because of this house making us both ill when in it. It isn't when it suits, it is when my body and health will allow, and thankfully my son understands this at aged 14 now, whereas my fickle 70 year old mother who knows and saw with her own eyes me in icu dying all wired and tubed up that my son then aged 13 yrs never saw, she doesn't understand. I feel completely lost, alone and overwhelmed.

[marie1955]

I am so sorry for your problems, truly, my prayers are with you! I was under an induced to coma for 5 days. The dr.'s surgeons + were not only extremely excited but even more so amazed that I survived! Yes I, as others, do have my own problems and do live in extreme in pain but when I read other's stories, such as yours it tells me I have no right to complain!

I apologize but I do have to end this msg I can not longer text or hold a pen too long because of the pain and inability to to hold my arm up. Just trust me that you will be in my prayers and in God that you will be watched over!