QI’m working on the next season of Judging Amy and want to give a birthing mother something like preeclampsia. She gives birth to a healthy baby but then suffers a cardiac arrest and, though successfully resuscitated, is left in a coma. Can she remain in this coma for six weeks? Once she wakes up, what kind of rehab or care would she need?
Paul Guyot
Supervising producer of the TNT series Leverage
APreeclampsia would work. It can cause high blood pressure, edema of the hands, feet, and face, seizures, coma, and rarely a cardiac arrest, as in your scenario. After a cardiopulmonary arrest (CPA), even with successful cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), the victim could suffer brain damage that can be temporary or permanent. This is called anoxic encephalopathy, which is injury to the brain resulting from lack of oxygen.
After such an event, she could be in a coma for six weeks and then wake up. She would first begin to move her limbs or fingers, not purposefully but movement nonetheless. These movements would become more purposeful such as tugging at the sheets, pulling at IV lines, and grasping at objects. When she awakened, she would be lethargic and confused. She might not recognize where she is, what is going on, what day or month or year it is, who she is, and who the people around her are. We call this disorientation to person, time, place, and situation. She might talk nonsense or even show signs of paranoia, thinking she is being held prisoner and that her family and the doctors are out to get her. Gradually, these defects would resolve. This might take hours, days, weeks, or months. Typically, days or weeks.
Or she could simply wake up and be almost immediately normal. Either is possible.
She would require physical and psychiatric therapy and could return to normal or be left with memory, cognitive, mental, or emotional problems that could last for months or forever. This gives you great leeway in how you handle the sequence of events.