The day Lindsey O’Connor’s fifth baby entered the world, was the day she left. For 47 days she lay suspended in a medically-induced coma, hovering in nothingness. The time before and after her long sleep were spliced together in O’Connor’s memory. The time in the middle, too long for her loved ones, and time erased for her. The miracle her family desperately prayed for was a miracle that Lindsey missed. She awoke to a world that kept moving without her and began the long journey to love her newborn daughter, to search for her identity, meaning and lost and found love. Applying her journalism background, O’Connor set out to discover what happened during her time lost as she does when researching a piece of literary journalism about someone else. In a strange twist, she reported her own story.
In The Long Awakening, O’Connor beautifully and bravely shares her journey to re-stitch her life after a life-altering trauma and her continuing search for self. On August 30, 2002 at the age of 41, O’Connor experienced childbirth complications and received over 20 units of blood, two times the amount of blood in her body, while giving birth to her daughter, Caroline. Doctors put her into a medically-induced coma to allow her brain, lungs and body to heal. Initially her doctors did not know what was medically wrong, and there was no promise she would wake up. While in a coma, Lindsey suffered multi-organ failure and was close to death several times, leaving her family on an emotional roller coaster.
For 47 excruciating days her family waited with Lindsay’s expected death looming. Miraculously, she woke up. With no memory of the time spent in a coma, in her mind she was holding her newborn only hours ago. She knew who and where she was, but other things took much longer to know. Faced with time that kept moving when her time had stopped, she began her recovery – her long awakening.
My thoughts...
Lindsay O'Connor went into the hospital, gave birth to a baby girl, and shortly afterwards began hemorraging. She lost so much blood doctors knew there would be brain damage... and there was. This is her story.
What a frightening time in the lives of Lindsay and her family. The book opens with Lindsay coming out of a 47 day medically induced coma. Her husband standing beside her asking again and again "Can you hear me?". Lindsay hearing but floating in and out of that sea of darkness. Her husband is absolutely wonderful, never giving up on her recovering. Remembering she had a baby who is now two and a half months old and wondering if she would be able to bond with her.
A story of faith and the will to live. Sad to read at times but I had to rejoice with her as she passed each stepping stone.
I received a copy of this book free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
“Available October 2013 at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.”
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