LIFESAVER PUP
Coma Ellie wakes after Mum vows to buy her a dog
A TEENAGER given hours to live after a brain bleed beat the odds to pull through when her mum promised her a puppy while she was in a coma.
Ellie Dunkerton was taken to hospital at the age of 18 after blood vessels in her brain burst.
At one stage her doctors were convinced she wouldn’t make it through the night.
She was in a coma, but was able to hear her family’s bedside pleas for her to wake up – including the promise of a pup.
Amazingly, Ellie regained consciousness, although doctors said she would never walk or talk again. Yet she made a stunning recovery and began talking again within weeks.
She said: “I wasn’t sure if my mum would keep her promise, so when I could speak again I asked.
“I couldn’t say much at first so I just pointed at her, smiled and said ‘dog’ – she started crying because she was so shocked I heard and remembered what she’d said.” After three months in hospital, Ellie went home and her family bought her a Staffie puppy called Enzo. And the pair are now inseparable.
Ellie said: “I remember everything my family said to me when I was in the coma. I’ve always wanted a dog but my mum said I couldn’t have one because we have cats.
“But when I was in the coma she was so desperate for me to wake up that she said, ‘If you wake up I’ll buy you a puppy.’”
Ellie, now 22, added: “He’s like my baby, he sleeps in my bed with his head on a pillow and a
COMA: Ellie in her hospital bed
blanket over him. I don’t know what I’d do without him now.
“I was diagnosed with depression after the bleed and he helped me through that and gave me a reason to get up out of bed every day.”
Exercising Enzo has helped Ellie learn how to walk again after she was left paralysed down her right side, with no use or her right hand and foot.
She had been unaware that she was born with a brain arteriovenous malformation (AVM) – an abnormal tangle of blood vessels connecting arteries and veins.
Ellie, from Tredegar, south Wales, said: “I was having a normal conversation when I started to feel weak, like I was going to faint.
“The right side of my face started drooping and I couldn’t speak, it was like I was having a stroke.”
Last month, she got the all-clear from follow-up treatment.
She now hopes to encourage other brain injury survivors to fight through their recoveries.