Note: we are republishing this story which originally made the news in September 2017.
After spending 12 days in a coma, doctors were afraid that 47-year-old Lyndee Brown Pellettiere-Swapp wouldn’t wake up, so they decided to turn off her life support machine. However, the Arizona resident had other plans. Once the machine was switched off, she told her husband: “I’m a fighter.”
Pellettiere-Swapp had been found unconscious by her husband about two weeks ago, and was rushed to hospital. There she suffered seizures, and remained mostly unconscious. Doctors determined that she wouldn’t come out of her coma and there was nothing else they could do.
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While she couldn’t move or speak, Pellettierre-Swapp was not brain-dead.
She told CBS5: “I remember people talking to me. I remember when people came to visit, my niece reading to me.”
Doctors had no idea she was aware of what was happening around her.
“I remember a doctor shining a light in my eyes and telling my family that there is no response. I also remember the doctor explaining what is going to happen when they turned the life support off,” she told Mirror Online.
Photo Credit: Facebook/YettaGibson
Her organs were failing, and because she’s an organ donor, her family made the decision to help save some of the organs.
“They gave one more day for everyone to come and say their goodbyes. On October 29, they turned my life support off. The entire time my husband kept whispering in my ear ‘I need you to fight,’” she recounted.
The organ team was on standby and doctors were waiting to declare her dead when she began desperately trying to get their attention.
Photo Credit: Facebook/YettaGibson
She told CBS5: “In my head it was very clear what I was saying, but it wasn’t to them. I was finally able to get out ‘I’m a fighter,’ which is what my husband was whispering in my ear.”
Pellettiere-Swapp had to learn to walk and feed herself, and since leaving the hospital in November 2015, she’s been hospitalized seven more times and had four surgeries because of complications.
Photo Credit: Facebook/YettaGibson
Pellettiere-Swapp suffers from anxiety, panic attacks, and PTSD, but her husband and children are thrilled she woke up.
Following her experience, she says: “Just because you are not conscious does not mean you cannot hear. So you should talk to your loved ones if you are in that situation. They hear you.”
Sources: Daily Mail