'I Was Locked In My Body'

‘Following a sudden bacterial infection, scientist and mother of three Rikke Schmidt Kjærgaard was hospitalised after losing the use of every part of her body, apart from her eyes. She reveals how the love of her family and a steely determination to survive helped her recover against the odds

When you come out of a coma, there is no Hollywood moment. It’s not like you wake up one day and ask yourself, ‘Where am I?’ After spending two months unconscious, it’s a very slow process to fully come to. For me, it started with opening my eyes very slightly. I couldn’t fathom what was going on and didn’t have the energy to think about it. For the first few days, I would open my eyes for ten seconds, then doze off again for two or three hours. I couldn't make out anything in the room except blurred objects and distant voices. It was like being half asleep.

It all started when a totally unexpected bacterial infection resulted in a violent attack of meningitis, causing multi-organ failure, septic shock and paralysis. In the days leading up to becoming ill, I’d been a working scientist and healthy mother-of-three. Then, suddenly, I was ‘locked in’ – I could see and understand everything that was happening around me, but couldn’t respond.

There had been no indication this was coming. It was just before Christmas and there were lots of things to do before finishing school and work for the holidays. I’d been juggling several research applications for my work in medical data visualisation, and had back-to-back meetings at the university where I was teaching students about this research, so I felt a bit more stressed than normal. But when I started to feel shivery on New Year’s Day during a walk with my husband Peter and my children, I thought I was coming down with a cold.