Brain Dead or...

 

Initially diagnosed as brain-dead, college student lucky to be alive

By Dave Andrusko

Hanna Lottritz published this picture of herself in hospital to warn others

Hanna Lottritz was brain-dead, pure and simple, or so it seemed. The 20-year-old college student had consumed an incredible amount of alcohol in a competitive drinking match on July 27, 2015. From that point on, Hanna doesn’t remember the evening which extended into the wee hours of the morning.
She was told she drank some more and then she collapsed. Lottritiz was flown to Renown Hospital in Reno, Nevada.
“The doctors thought I was brain dead because I was completely unresponsive,” she wrote on her blog, according to the Huffington Post UK. “My pupils were sluggishly reactive, I had no corneal reflex and I wasn’t responding to verbal or painful stimuli.”
Hanna was in critical condition, “suffering from acute respiratory failure and acute alcohol intoxication,” she explained.
Fortunately, the University of Nevada student woke from her coma about a day after her arrival at the hospital. “I had a tube down my throat and my hands were restrained so I couldn’t pull it out,” she wrote.
“The doctors and nurses told me how lucky I was to be alive. They told me that they didn’t think I would make it through the night. They asked me if I was trying to kill myself by drinking so much. This question hit me the hardest.”
In her blog postings last week, Hanna wrote

From my hospital bed in the Intensive Care Unit, my eyes were opened to the seriousness of being irresponsible with alcohol.

“The next day when I was discharged from the hospital, I realised that the way I looked at alcohol would be changed forever.

“Today is my 21st birthday, a day I have been looking forward to for quite some time now.

Source: NRLC News