Winnipeg man wakes up from COVID-19 coma

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This article was published 03/05/2020 (2123 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As the rest of the province dusts off the cobwebs that have accumulated over the past few weeks and prepares to re-open for business, Genevieve Funk-Unrau is still trying to make sense of the mess COVID-19 has made in her life.

Her husband Neil, 66, just emerged from a month-long medically-induced coma. Doctors believed it was his best chance to beat the novel coronavirus as he wrestled with it in the intensive care ward of St. Boniface Hospital.

The couple had returned from a vacation in Cuba on March 15. It was their first winter vacation as Neil is normally tied up with the classes he teaches on conflict resolution at Menno Simmons College, but he’d started cutting back ahead of retirement.

Shortly after their return, each had tested positive. On March 27, Neil was admitted to hospital with significant respiratory symptoms. Genevieve has since made a full recovery.

He was among the first in the province to be hospitalized with COVID-19. After he was admitted to hospital but before he was put into the coma, Funk-Unrau remembers talking to Neil on the phone and he joked that he was lucky to have the doctor with the most experience with COVID-19 in Manitoba treating him — he was the doctor’s third patient.

But the window where Neil could handle phone calls was brief and after he had set foot in the hospital, his wife was unable to visit him — even after she had recovered.

The month dragged on for her. All she had to verify that this was all really happening were short video-conference visits where she could see him hooked up to the wide array of machines keeping him alive.

“I’ve been describing the hospital as this black hole where people went in and possibly didn’t come out,” Funk-Unrau told the Free Press.

There were no guarantees, and there were multiple occasions where Neil took turns for the worse and she had to contemplate the prospect of him dying, never having had the chance to say goodbye.

“There were many scary times where that was very much there,” Funk-Unrau said. “I think the lack of control was the hardest.” Even after withdrawing the medications that put Neil into the coma, it took much longer for him to wake up than expected.

Funk-Unrau tends toward being a private person, but when things became too much, she reached out to her church community on social media.

“Things had been going downhill for about two days, so I just thought, ‘You know what, he needs more than just my prayers, than just my family’s prayers. So I put out a call for that on my Facebook page,” Funk-Unrau said.

Within 12 hours things were looking up again.

Neil did wake, but it was a slow process and it became evident that he had suffered a series of strokes. His speech is mumbled and garbled, but he is interactive with nods and shakes of the head, she says.

“We have quite a good support system, but it’s going to drag on a lot longer now. You can prepare for a week or two of something, but now — especially since Neil is out of his coma — and seeing that he will have a long road ahead of him, of recovery, then it puts us in a different place. And it is going to be more difficult,” she said.

Funk-Unrau wants to be there to help with his recovery in hospital, but she is still not permitted to visit, even though he has now been moved out of intensive care. She knows doctors and nurses are taking good care of him, but they won’t ever devote the time that a wife would.

“I’m still really hopeful for Neil, future-wise, and I really need that hope. I think the piece that makes me really a bit scared is the fact that I’m not there to help with his recovery. I don’t think he’s going to recover as well without me, because the staff, they just can’t spend enough time to really engage with him, to help him come out of this,” she said. “So it’s a bit of hope and a bit of dread.”

She understands the need for caution but believes that the potential negative impact on her husband’s health if he doesn’t have her support needs to be recognized.

So, with all of this going on, to ask Funk-Unrau what she thinks of loosening restrictions coming into effect starting Monday, she urges caution because she knows the damage this virus can cause.

“It has to be done very carefully because this virus is so unknown. And I don’t necessarily want to see it opened just for economic reasons but I think there is a need for it for emotional, mental health reasons,” Funk-Unrau said.

She also hopes to see more widespread testing in Manitoba as restrictions are lifted.

sarah.lawrynuik@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @SarahLawrynuik