Doctors told her family she was brain-dead. They said it was time to pull the plug.Her mother said no.Kertisha Brabson was 31 years old when her body began attacking its own brain. A rare condition called anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis triggered a seizure that left her in a coma for seven months.Hospital after hospital gave up on her.
Doctors were baffled and eventually stopped trying. They told her mother, Kertease, the words no parent should ever hear: brain-dead, pull the plug, end-of-life.Kertease ignored every one of them.”Every decision I made was because she had two little people depending on their mother to come home,” she said.So she kept moving Kertisha from one hospital to the next.
First to the second, then to the third. Until they finally reached the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, where a specialist named Dr. Shraddha Mainali took one look at her case and refused to give up.On April 7, 2019 — seven months after she had slipped into the coma — Kertisha opened her eyes.To her, it was still September. She had no idea she had been gone that long. When a nurse told her, her first question was: “Does my mom know?”That Christmas, she was home. Sitting in her mother’s living room. Hugging the two children who had waited seven months for their mother to come back.Medicine said goodbye. A mother’s love said not yet.And love won.
