20-Year-Old Tennessee Woman Wakes Up Months After Car Crash, Learns She Gave Birth During Coma

When 20-year-old Sharista Giles of Tennessee was involved in a car accident on Dec 6, she was four months pregnant. When she woke up this week from coma, she had already given birth and her baby boy is now four months old.

Her waking up from coma after the accident was unexpected because doctors said that she has only a 10 percent chance of coming out of coma. By January, Giles prematurely gave birth to Baby L who only weighed one pound and 14 ounces, reports Reuters.

When Giles opened her eyes for the first time on Wednesday, she blinked, squeezed the finger of a relative, acknowledged her father and saw her son for the first time. She has been recovering at the Harrington Care and Rehab Center in Harriman, Tennessee.

Giles suffered from head trauma when her friend, who was behind the wheel, dozed off and the car hit a concrete barrier. Her family remains positive that the young mother will recover, contrary to doctor’s prognosis of a slim chance of recovery.

Coma diagnosis is one of the biggest battlegrounds in the medical profession, wrote Liz Townsend in NRLC.org. Some doctors believe that the comatose patient has slim chances of recovery, but many hospitals have stories of patients who woke up eventually and recovered over time.

Characteristics of coma differ from patient to patient, explains Dr Mihai Dimancescu, chairman of the board of the Coma Recovery Association. Some coma patients could hear what is happening around them, but they cannot interact.

The association is hoping to convince doctors and hospitals to give the patients time to wake from a coma, especially for older patients.

To contact the writer, email: v.hernandez@ibtimes.com.au