Bringing mum back to life
When a Taranaki woman was struck by a devastating medical event, her family became life-saving warriors. Virginia Winder learns a timely and enduring tale of love and the power of being relentless.
Lisa Tamati never knew the years she spent ultra-distance training were preparing her for the toughest challenge of her life – the race to save her mum.
On January 24, 2016, Isobel Tamati suffered a burst brain aneurysm, which led to catastrophic consequences.
Doctors believed the 74-year-old wouldn’t survive.
But Lisa, brothers Dawson and Mitchell and Isobel’s husband Cyril, wouldn’t give up on her.
They fought, they advocated, they broke rules and barely left her side to ensure she received the best care available – and more.
At her lowest, Isobel couldn’t talk, walk, had no control over her bodily functions, and no memory. ‘‘She didn’t remember who she was, or what she was. She was like a baby. The software had not been installed,’’ Lisa says.
Once she was home, the family all worked together towards Isobel’s rehabilitation. But leading the way was Lisa, a running coach, author, film maker, podcaster and inspirational speaker, who has clocked up 140 ultra-distance marathons.
This is a good news story, one of resilience, belief and endless love. It’s now a book.
Lisa has just released Relentless, a name that stemmed from a remark by an aunty who saw the mother and daughter training at the Aquatic Centre.
‘‘My aunty says, ‘you are just relentless’. That’s a bloody good name for a book,’’ says Lisa.
Sitting in the lounge of Lisa’s Highlands Park home, a bright, astute and eloquent Isobel listens to her story unfold. She has no memory of the first year of her collapse, including the lead-up to the burst aneurysm, and during the interview learns new information about her recovery.
Her medical disaster began slowly.
She started having headaches and went to the doctor, who thought she had a stiff neck. But Isobel knew it was something more than that.
The pain came to a head two days after that. ‘‘She got up to go to the loo in the early hours and collapsed on the floor with a thunderclap headache – it’s like a storm in your head,’’ Lisa says.
Cyril and Dawson called an ambulance to the Tamati home in Bayly Rd, New Plymouth, just minutes from Taranaki Base Hospital. ‘‘I got that horrible phone call you all dread – mum has collapsed and is going to the hospital, get over here now.
‘‘I jumped out of bed, threw on a dress and little did I know I wouldn’t be home for another four weeks.’’
While the ambulance officer thought Isobel was having a stroke, the doctor they dealt with at ED believed she had a migraine, gave her painkillers, and told Lisa and her whanau they just had to wait for them to kick in.
But Lisa wasn’t happy; she knew her mum was facing something more sinister.
After four hours, she phoned a paramedic, friend Megan Stewart, who came up to see Isobel and believed she was either having a stroke or had an aneurysm.
Finally, a CT scan was ordered, but by then six hours had passed.
The scan showed blood throughout the brain. ‘‘It was a disaster – they didn’t think she was going to get through,’’ Lisa says.
My dad came over to me and said, ‘we had better start preparing the funeral’. I said no f…ing way – she’s alive and breathing and I promise I will do everything in my power to bring her back.’’
Medical staff organised for Isobel to be transferred by air ambulance to Wellington’s neurological unit. While Cyril and his sons prepared to drive to Wellington, Lisa stayed with her mum.
‘‘I was with her for another 12 hours in ICU, where she was hanging on to life by a thread,’’ she says.
They flew to Wellington, arriving about 1am. Isobel went straight into surgery to have a stent put in her brain to drain blood caused by the burst aneurysm.
Aneurysms are unpredictable, so while the surgeons stopped the bleeding, there was a chance it could blow again at any time.
A decision was made to go up through the femoral artery into the brain to place hyperbaric platinum coils to prevent a further bleed from the 16mm aneurysm.
During the coiling operation, Isobel had a major stroke, which left her paralysed on the right side of the body.
Afterwards, she was semiconscious, and in and out of comas. She was also in danger of having vasospasms, which could cause her coma to go deeper.
‘‘That happened,’’ Lisa says. The life-threatening period for those who have an endovascular coiling technique is three weeks following the procedure.
‘‘She had round-the-clock care from family. They were trying to kick us out at 10pm at night, but no way was I leaving my mother alone.’’
Lisa told medical staff: ‘‘If she dies, I’m not letting her die alone.’’
Mitchell and Dawson shared the shifts.
‘‘In the beginning, she could still speak, but she got worse and worse – those vasospasms were killing her brain.’’
One morning she arrived to relieve Mitchell and found 10 doctors and nurses working on Isobel, trying to keep her alive. ‘‘It was the most horrible moment of my life.’’
In a deep coma, Isobel was moved to ICU, where she received one-on-one medical support 24/7 and was put on a drug called noradrenaline.
Isobel began to improve and the Tamati family could get some rest.
‘‘She would sometimes come out of her coma and was still able to talk but didn’t make any sense. She was saying weird things.’’
Like Isobel’s own broken brain, she thought everyone’s relationships were breaking up, including her marriage.
‘‘We had to send dad home – he was having heart pains,’’ Lisa says.
‘‘Because dad wasn’t there, mum thought he’d left her for this girl, Jill, who he went out with when he was 13 or 14. We had to get a video of dad saying he loved her.’’
There were also humorous moments. ‘‘One day she woke up and said, ‘I’ve just been flying with Captain Kirk on the Starship Enterprise’.’’
Isobel shrugs, bemused: ‘‘I don’t know why, I wasn’t really a big fan.’’
‘‘Then she would disappear again,’’ Lisa says.
After three weeks she came out of the coma, could say a few words, but had no control of her body.
Considered stable, she went back to the neurological ward.
Mitchell had to return to work, so Lisa and Dawson stayed in Wellington to support their mum. After a few weeks, Isobel was flown back to New Plymouth and Taranaki Base Hospital.
‘‘In some ways it was a relief – we had more family support and we could be home.’’
Lisa, tenacious in the extreme, was concerned her mum was less responsive than she had been in Wellington and wondered if it had anything to do with not having supplementary oxygen, which she’d had in Wellington.
When told it wasn’t necessary, the self-confessed science and study nerd got researching.
She found medical studies that indicated people who have had brain injuries or strokes have a high incidence of sleep apnoea and should be tested.
Naturally, Lisa asked for a test to be done. It was declined.
Undeterred, she got her dad’s friend, a sleep apnoea specialist, to come in covertly. He put Isobel on a sleep apnoea machine, which showed Isobel’s oxygen levels were, at their lowest point, at 70 per cent.
When Lisa presented this information to medical staff, they didn’t believe her – until they saw the evidence themselves.
Isobel began receiving positive air pressure from a sleep apnoea CPAP machine and started making little improvements.
After three months in hospital, the next action was whether to put Isobel in a hospital level nursing home or bring her home, where she would require 24/7 two-person care provided by family and health care assistants.
For the Tamati family, the decision was simple – bring her home.
‘‘I really wanted her to be in her own environment, then she will know we haven’t abandoned her, and she’ll be surrounded by her own things,’’ Lisa says.
Following discussions, Isobel stayed in hospital for a further two weeks and then went home with the resources needed and rostered caregivers.
‘‘I’m just in awe of what my kids did, and realise that without them I wouldn’t be here,’’ Isobel says.
She has only one recollection of that first year following the aneurysm and stroke. ‘‘I have a vague memory of being in a hyperbaric chamber,’’ she says.
Lisa’s research showed her the benefits of hyperbaric oxygen therapy for brain regeneration. ‘‘It compresses the oxygen molecules and you can take up 12 times more oxygen,’’ she says.
‘‘The compressed oxygen molecules can pass through the blood brain barrier and target those areas of the brain that are not firing.’’
She tracked down a chamber in Taranaki, and Isobel had 33 treatments. ‘‘My mum started to wake up and she started to have more awareness, speak a little bit, and we could see more intelligence there.’’
When they lost access to the chamber, Lisa mortgaged her house and bought her own hyperbaric chamber to put in her mum’s home for regular use.
Alongside this, the tireless Lisa, with help from a physiotherapist, began retraining her mum.
‘‘Her spatial awareness had completely gone. She had to relearn all the movement patterns. It took 18 months to teach her to roll over,’’ Lisa says.
With her own inner-strength, Isobel adhered to an eight-hour-a-day programme, which included yoga, movement, physio, balance training, brain exercises, learning to read and write and do everyday chores.
She also stuck to a healthy, mostly plant-based diet based on burning ketones.
When they introduced parallel bars, Isobel’s walking took a great leap forward.
‘‘Within 12 months she took her first unaided steps within the parallel bars and then I knew she would get there and walk on her own again.’’
Isobel also began to speak. ‘‘I remember the first sentence she uttered when we were putting her into bed. She turned to us and said, ‘well it seems my equilibrium has been a bit off today’, and she shut off again. We thought, ‘she’s in there’,’’ Lisa says.
Piece by piece, Isobel came back. ‘‘I could see everyone busting a gut to get me there,’’ she says. ‘‘I didn’t want to disappoint my kids – that’s still a driving force. Cyril tells me how lucky he is to have me. He’s totally dedicated to my recovery and is the most amazing husband.’’
In her career, Isobel taught kids with dyslexia how to read and write. ‘‘So, I learnt how to hang in there.’’
She can now walk unaided, goes for a 3km walk each day, visits the gym five times a week and spends time in the pool. She is also able to visit Centre City by herself, go to the bank and ask for help if need be. ‘‘I don’t think I’ve lost anything as far as my brain goes,’’ Isobel says.
The milestones continue.
Lisa decided her mum needed more independence so made it her mission to teach her how to drive again. She took her to the carpark down by Port Taranaki and put her in the driver’s seat.
‘‘Turn on the key and she’s grinning from ear to ear,’’ Lisa says.
‘‘It was innately there,’’ Isobel says, although she didn’t believe she’d ever drive again. ‘‘But Lisa did; she believes in miracles.’’
About a year ago,
Isobel regained her driver’s licence. ‘‘It’s opened up the world to me being able to drive again.
‘‘I do pat myself on my back when I do something for the first time,’’ she says.
She’s still relearning to swim.
Once an accomplished swimmer who loved aquarobics, Isobel was terrified to go to the pool because she’d forgotten how to float.
‘‘In the last two weeks, we’ve had a breakthrough,’’ Lisa says, explaining how her mum can now dog paddle forward and back wearing a flotation belt.
‘‘You have to walk in blind faith, keep on going and keep on going until you get a breakthrough; that can take weeks, months, years. It’s taken four years with the swimming.’’
‘‘It’s wonderful, I feel free again,’’ Isobel adds.
Freedom gained from resilience, persistence and being relentless.
Now Lisa hopes her new book will help hundreds if not hundreds of thousands of people.
‘‘It’s about taking on these massive challenges where you can be against the odds and how to persevere through the despair and the dark times, with people telling you, you’ll never do it, and having months with no progress. That’s why the title is called Relentless,’’ she says.
‘‘When you believe in somebody and you walk alongside them and give them directions and show them how to get there, you take it step, by step, by step,’’ Lisa says.
‘‘Mum taught me that when I was running the length of New Zealand; she told me not to look at the total distance but just look at the next power pole. Every big humungous challenge is looking at the next step.’’
That wisdom, passed down from mother to daughter, saved Isobel’s life.
‘‘My dad came over to me and said, ‘we had better start preparing the funeral’. I said no f…ing way – she’s alive and breathing and I promise I will do everything in my power to bring her back.’’