A British woman was forced to give birth six weeks early, and while in a coma, because a non-cancerous brain tumor she had had for years suddenly erupted.
Dental hygienist Emma Taylor, 33, fell abruptly ill in October when she was seven and a half months pregnant, prompting her partner, Scott Weeks, to rush her to hospital, reports SWNS.
“I called an ambulance, but they couldn’t get to us fast enough, so I decided to take Emma myself,” Weeks, 47, told the outlet.
“I was lucky that I did, because the doctors said that if I had waited four hours, I would have had a very different result.”
Doctors discovered the tumor and Taylor was placed in a medically induced coma so she could deliver Ophelia via emergency caesarean section.
The baby suffered no complications despite being born six weeks prematurely.
“They needed to scan Emma, but to do it safely, they gave birth to Ophelia first,” Weeks explained.
“Scans then showed a huge tumor that she had been living with that had burst after the pregnancy hormones accelerated its growth. This caused a hemorrhage in the brain, and as a result, her right brain stem and her right eye were affected, leaving her left side paralyzed,” she continued.
Taylor was airlifted to Queen’s Hospital London where she underwent surgery to remove the brain tumor two days after giving birth.
Surgeons reported successfully removing two-thirds of the 60-millimeter tumor, and Taylor remained in a coma for three months.
Now, he is recovering in a rehabilitation center, since he suffered paralysis.
She only communicates using her head and hands, but she’s determined to get better for Ophelia.
“She’s at the stage where she can communicate with head and hand movements, we’ve even had a few tears,” Weeks shared.
Doctors suspect that Taylor had been living with the tumor since she was young, Weeks said, adding that she had complained of a headache before being rushed to the hospital.
He remembered the left side of his lifeless body and his right eye half open and half closed.
“I knew she hadn’t been feeling well, and while she was downstairs she fell out of bed and vomited on the floor,” said Weeks, who works in sales and marketing.
Three months after the procedure, in late January, Taylor began to demonstrate “cyclical awareness,” according to SWNS.
Weeks says the publicly-funded UK health system has since considered Taylor a lower priority and is concerned about cuts to his rehabilitation therapy.
“Although the NHS staff have been amazing, due to a lack of beds, she will be moved to a lower intensity rehabilitation programme, which I fear will affect her progress,” he confessed.
He is raising money through GoFundMe to put Taylor in a private rehab program, with the goal of raising around $630,000. More than $35,000 had been pledged as of Wednesday afternoon.
“Intensive physical therapy is critical to his recovery and without it we fear he will never be able to recover enough to return home and regain his independence,” Weeks wrote on the fundraising page.
He hopes Taylor can walk and talk again.
“She is trapped in her own body, and I know that all she wants is to come home to her baby,” she said.