My dad

[Dadchat]

My dad has a heart attack 8 days ago and was put in a medically induced coma. His heart is now stable and he’s breathing on his own however he hasn’t really woken up even though he’s Been off sedation for over 4 days. He opens his eyes but can respond at all so not sure if he understands us or not. His ct and mri didn’t show anything conclusive but his eeg on Monday showed profound abnormalities. They now want to do another eeg today but if the same they say we need to prepare for the worst but I still think it’s too early to give up. Has anybody else experienced similar and they have come round? I refuse to believe my dad is not in there somewhere?

[Sepsur]

It can take different time scales for people to wake after an induced coma. It took me eleven days. There was concern that I might have some brain damage due to the severity of my heart & respiratory failure. I don’t know what the scans showed at that time. I feel pretty normal within the scheme of things. I hope you & your father enjoy a happy outcome.

[El_Violet]

My dad was in a coma for four weeks after a heart attack and he unfortunately did not wake up. But he was elderly, 83, and had kidney problems. His eyes opened after a week and a half but he could not communicate for the other 2 weeks. We put music for him, read a book he liked and talked to him but he did not react to it. However, we do not know if that could have made a difference and if he died more peacefully, we hope so. It was the saddest thing to go through and you have to stay strong and not lose hope because everyone is different and could be that your dad will recover well, hopefully. I wish you the best.

[VickyC1982]

I’m really sorry to hear about your Dad. My Dad had a massive heart attack at 50 and it was one of the scariest times of my life. I had to have a CT scan of my head as they were concerned that I may have brain damage due to the hypoxia (lack of oxygen) from the respiratory failure I had.

Did you dad go into cardiac arrest and did he require CPR?

I will say I was massively confused and didn’t know what the hell was going on until I left ITU and went to a normal ward. I would continue to persevere with your Dad, talk to him, play his favourite music, voice clips of other family members. I really hope he starts to wake up and come back to you all xx

[Copse77]

Remain hopeful is the best advice we were given when my brother was critically ill in an induced coma with sepsis and ARDS. Your presence will reassure your Dad so do talk to him. Due to the sedation and drugs it will take time to work out of his system and it may be sometime before he can respond. We took a Radio in to be played for my brother and he did recover. It did take a few weeks before he started to come round and he couldn’t speak and had to relearn how to swallow and speak due to being on life support. We were lucky. I hope your Dad recovers. You are in our thoughts.

[Dadchat]

Thanks all for your reassuring comments, unfortunately he started having seizures which indicated irreversible brain damage due to his brain being starved of oxygen and he passed away on Sunday 💔😢

[Emrad1909 in reply to Dadchat]

I’m so sorry to hear this! I lost my Mum last year on the 26th of January and she was only 64. It’s so hard losing a parent. Thinking of you and your family.

[Riri04 in reply to Dadchat]

im so sorry to hear that. How long was the brain out of oxygen for?

[Dadchat in reply to Riri04]

We are not sure, my stepmom who did CPR on him doesn’t seem to think it was that long as ambulance arrived in 9 minutes but they had to use difribulator to get his heart going again. Hospital said early tests suggest it wasn’t that long but after a week we learned that they thought it was 20-30 mins! When we queried that they said not to get too hung up on exact time as the same damage can be done wether it’s 2 or 20 minutes?

[Riri04 in reply to Dadchat]

Similar to my boyfriend. He was out of oxygen for about 20mins+. He’s on life support and induced coma at the moment.

[katiegardenhead in reply to Dadchat]

I'm so sorry to hear this. Sending you and your family lots of love x