Alliance, OH — Kertisha Brabson, a 31-year old woman from Ohio, would not be alive today if it wasn’t for her mother who never lost hope that she would wake up again after being in a coma for 7 months.
Her mother, Kertease Williams, brought her to the hospital in September 2018 when she noticed something wrong with her. At the hospital, she was doing weird things such as reaching out for invisible things, talking to herself, and dancing without music before she had a seizure that put her into a coma.
“I don’t have no doctor’s background,” Williams said during an interview with 10TV. “[I’ve] never been to school for anything, but when it’s your child, you’re going to do everything in your power to bring your daughter back.”
Doctors eventually found Kertisha was suffering from anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, wherein the body fights its own brain cells. However, it was not easy finding out how to fix it.
“We were going to keep moving her because once I saw the doctors scratching their heads that clearly let me know they gave up and they don’t know what’s going on with her,” Williams said. “They told me she was brain-dead and pull the plug and all those things.”
After moving to several hospitals, Kertisha was then brought to Wexner Medical Center at Ohio State. She was treated by Dr. Shraddha Mainali, a specialist in stroke and neurocritical care, who admitted that the mortality rate for her condition is above 60 percent.
Kertisha was still having up to 20 seizures a day, but Dr. Mainali’s team worked hard to treat her. After four months under her care, in April 2019, she woke up.
Kertisha said she had no idea 7 months have passed while she was asleep and in a coma. She said, “I have no idea. I don’t remember anything.”
Dr. Mainali was glad to be a part of the amazing team that kept Kertisha alive. “I am quite hopeful in her case that she’s going to continue to do well and hopefully live a normal life,” she said.
Meanwhile, Williams was beyond grateful for the medical professionals and that she didn’t give up on her daughter, especially for the sake of Kertisha’s 2 little kids, Diamonique and Perez.
“Every decision that I made was because she got two little people that was depending on their mother to come home and that was her kids,” Williams said.