medically induced coma

Only ten days after giving birth, Stevie Caffrey collapsed. With her heart and kidneys failing, doctors put her into a medically induced coma – and saved her life.
But when she came round four weeks later, she couldn't remember that she had a daughter.

Miss Caffrey, 20, had short-term memory loss as a result of being pumped full  of drugs, and has had to learn to walk again.
As she came to, a nurse said her father would be in shortly with her baby Maisie. Miss Caffrey recalled yesterday: 'I said, "I haven't got a baby''.'
Her boyfriend Andy Stafford – who she had also forgotten – and father Lyndon Caffrey desperately tried to jog her memory.
After two days she remembered the baby girl, but the details of her pregnancy and the birth were just a haze.
It was another three months before she could finally return home and begin  to bond with Maisie, who is now four months old.

She said: 'The last two months were horrible. I just wanted to come home. I was upset because I had not seen her for a long time.'
Maisie was born on November 5 last year but after just three days Lyndon, who works for Delta Taxis, and Andy became worried when Stevie started being sick.
When she collapsed at 2.30am on November 15, paramedics took her to Fazakerley Hospital.
After a blood test, she was rushed to Liverpool Women's hospital at 5am.
Andy said: 'They thought her appendix was ruptured. But then I was told to go out of the room because her heart had stopped. It did not seem real.'
Stevie was resuscitated, rushed to the Royal Liverpool Hospital and taken straight to the operating theatre.

Andy said he watched in disbelief as her body swelled up.
He said: 'She had eyes like a gecko. I almost broke down crying.'

Doctors referred Stevie to specialists at Wythenshawe Hospital, in Manchester, and she was taken there by a police escort.
Surgeons operated on her heart and put her on the list for a transplant, but unable to risk the wait, they put a ventricular assist system into the left side of her heart instead to help it function.
Stevie woke up in mid-December but it was another three months before she could return home to Maisie, who was being looked after by Andy's mum and Stevie's grandmother and aunt.

Stevie said: 'I was upset because I had not seen her for a long time.'
'Knowing other people were looking after her, I thought she was going to call Andy's mum Mummy.
'She is my baby - how was I going to feel if she called anyone else Mummy?'
Stevie finally left hospital three weeks ago. Doctors gave her a portable monitor that measures her heart rhythm and are hopeful she will remain stable and will not need a heart transplant for some time.
Andy said: 'It is up to her from now on. The doctors have done the most they could.'
The new mother, who is due to start a dance course at college, said: 'The last two months were horrible. I just wanted to come home. I did not think I would be here.'