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Brian Giebelhaus photo
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| Coral-Lei
Schweigert (right), with daughter, Ashana, uses yoga to recovery from a
brain injury suffered a year ago. |
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By Hannah Sutherland
Days before Christmas, the numbness started.
Coral-Lei Schweigert had woken up
in the middle of the night and gone to the bathroom when she realized she was
losing feeling in her right hand.
She tried to walk and stumbled – her right leg was becoming paralyzed as
well.
Her boyfriend at the time helped her down the stairs and into the car,
rushing her to Peace Arch Hospital. At the emergency room, everything went
black. She doesn’t remember anything until a week later.
•••
After arriving at Peace Arch Hospital around 2:30 a.m. on Dec. 18, 2008,
doctors performed a CT scan on Schweigert. It showed that the left side of
her brain was swelling,
because of an unidentified virus.
She was transferred to Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster, where a
piece of her skull was removed to relieve the inflammation.
That evening, her parents and sister flew in from Alberta – where Schweigert
grew up – to be by her side. Her four-year-old daughter, Ashana, who was to
return home that day from a visit with her father, extended her stay in his
Vancouver home.
Come Christmas Day, Schweigert’s brain was
still swollen, and a second piece of her skull was removed.
While she was lying in a hospital bed pumped with morphine, duct tape
covering the wound on her head, doctors warned Schweigert’s family that the
virus – which they couldn’t, and still can’t, explain – could leave her in a
vegetative state.
But, against all odds, Schweigert’s condition began to improve as the
swelling subsided.
Her first memory is of being visited by a friend two days after Christmas,
and having difficulties talking.
Her entire right side was also paralyzed. Schweigert could still feel sensations
but couldn’t move that half of her body.
“Everything was dead weight on the right. It made me very weak.”
Schweigert’s brain injury took more than just a physical
toll. Intellectually, she couldn’t process her thoughts.
“I couldn’t comprehend anything; what people were saying. I couldn’t put the
words together. I couldn’t make it make sense in my head,” she said. “I
couldn’t say dog. I knew what a dog was but I couldn’t picture it.
“It was like being an infant all over again. It was like a rebirthing –
that’s how I look at it still.”
Schweigert’s father tried connecting with her by singing Elvis, which he
played while she was growing up.
Long-term memories were the first to come back. More recent knowledge, such
as Ashana’s name, took longer.
Nurses would continually ask if she knew the time, day and where she was –
she usually didn’t.
•••
About a week after Christmas, Schweigert, wearing a helmet to protect her
head, began rehab.
A physiotherapist came in every morning and stretched her limbs, moving her
arm over her head. It was a “very painful” exercise, Schweigert said, noting
her muscles were tight after weeks of lying on her right side.
She was recovering – so much so, that on Jan. 26, both
pieces of her skull were replaced in a third surgery.
That was when Schweigert remembers the pain – massive headaches that seared
the left part of her forehead. It was the first time she consciously accepted
pain killers. A naturalist, Schweigert only ate raw food, and often refused
medication.
“I was so dogmatic. I was so against the whole thing of conventional
medicine, wanting to be natural.”
Schweigert had been physically fit, having graduated UBC’s kinesiology
program in 2000 and going on to become a personal trainer, masseuse and
yogi.
In her condition, however, she was forced to accept medical help.
“I felt the pain. I got smart and just did what I had to do.”
Schweigert’s slow recovery of physical functions on her right side started
with “miraculous” movement in her thumb.
She was in Port Moody’s Eagle Ridge Hospital, where she had been transferred
four days after her final surgery. She relearned to walk pushing a
wheelchair, and after a week ditched the support and took steps on her
own.
While her ability to mentally process improved as well, Schweigert still had
difficulties expressing herself.
“I’d be having a conversation with somebody and all of a sudden lose my train
of thought,” she said.
Reading was also a challenge.She used blocks, cards and peg boards – as well
as games such as Mastermind and Memory – to help train her brain to reconnect.
While she knew Ashana’s name by the time she reached Eagle Ridge, it was at
the hospital she began learning to say it properly.
Schweigert said focusing on recovery made the separation from her daughter
easier to handle.
“It was easy for me unless she came to visit, and then it was very hard,
because then it was heartbreak.”
She had her low days, and remembers going into the lunchroom at one point and
letting herself cry for hours.
But there were also small victories.
After a few weeks at Eagle Ridge, a friend came to re-teach her yoga.
Unable to do the postures while standing, he helped her to the ground and
showed her the basic 30-minute floor series that had been so familiar to her
just months before.
“I didn’t remember a thing but my body knew. It knew where to go,” she
said.
Schweigert’s previous strength and co-ordination helped her recover quicker
than expected. She was discharged March 11, at which
point she returned to Alberta with Ashana for further rehabilitation.
They stayed with Schweigert’s parents while she attended an outpatient
program five days a week. Her speech therapy entailed leading a discussion
group with stroke patients, who had similar symptoms.
While in Calgary, she also practised Bikram yoga, which is carried out in a
heated room.
By the time she returned to B.C. in July, she had more confidence in her
physical abilities, and saw her first client that month. Last September, she
started taking on a regular stream of work.
She has continued to practice yoga – even finishing a 90-day challenge – and
is once again advanced, though not yet at the level she wants to be.
And, she still isn’t completely recovered.
•••
Schweigert has to be conscious of walking, which she does with a limp; if she
gets tired, her foot starts to drag.
She is still in pain everyday, as the muscles on her right work to keep up
with the more developed ones on her left.
There are still times she stumbles over her sentences, a difficulty she likens
to a speech impediment; and she can read, but there is still a noticeable
delay when reading aloud to Ashana, who is now 5.
She has also re-taught herself to print with her left hand – she is now
ambidextrous – but hasn’t yet tackled cursive.
Despite the challenges, Schweigert is pleased with her progress.
“Doctors thought I’d be a vegetable. They’re pretty shocked,” she said. “I’m
looking forward to continuing to progress. Occupational therapy, I don’t
think that’s going to stop anytime soon.
“I hope for the best. I want full recovery.”
Follow-up tests since have not detected abnormalities in her body, and while
last year’s emergency was unexpected, she is not worried about it occurring
again.
“I think this was a lesson for me,” she said. “I don’t believe in creating
fear.”
She is now living with Ashana in White Rock. There is a view of the ocean
from the living room, where she meditates, works and practises yoga.
She wants to focus on yoga professionally, and plans on attending college in
the fall to become a teacher.
Additionally, Schweigert would like to give back by volunteering for
rehabilitation services – possibly teaching stroke patients yoga – and is
documenting her ordeal in a book she has been writing.
She said her experience has not only opened new doors, it has made her a
better, more calm person.
“Life is completely different now.”
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