HEARTBREAK AT SUDDEN DEATH I laid my wife to rest in her wedding dress 16 weeks after our Big Day
wedding dress hallucinations and memory loss. For four days, doctors at Manchester’s Stepping Hill Hospital fought to save her. Michael says: “The medical team took advice from encephalitis specialists, but they told us Saima’s brain and many of her organs weren’t functioning.
“Her heart was only beating because she was on a machine. If they turned it off, she’d have little chance.
“I prayed to God, ‘If she survives but has no quality of life, please take her.’ I knew she would have hated being in a vegetative state.” When doctors could
f ind no heartbeat, Michael and Saima’s family agreed the machine should be turned off.
“I gave her a kiss and told her I loved her and that I’d make her proud,” he says.
In keeping with the couple’s Jewish faith, Saima was buried the e next day on December 18 – 16 weeks after they wed.
Many of the guests who had been at the wedding were at Saima’s funeral as she was buried in her wedding dress in Chorltoncum-Hardy, Manchester.
Michael, of Cheadle, says: “My godfather has asked if there was anything I wanted in the service. I said Saima had wanted to wear her dress again. I fetched it from the wardrobe and handed it to him.
“In my funeral speech I said how much I loved her and how I had lost my soulmate.” Next April, Michael will take on a
three-day, 200-mile cycling challenge from his Manchester wedding venue to London’s Buckingham Palace in a bid to raise £25,000 for the Encephalitis Society, hoping more research will lead to better treatment and a better chance of survival.
He will be joined by about 30 other riders, many of whom knew Saima.
“Even those who survive encephalitis can be left with horrible side effects,” he says. “It’s so dangerous. More research will mean people like Saima don’t just disappear.
“I decided to end up at Buckingham Palace because I wanted somewhere fit for a queen. That’s what Saima was to me.”
I gave her a kiss and told her I loved her and that I’d make her proud MICHAEL ON MOMENT LIFE SUPPORT WAS TURNED OFF
For more information, see encephalitis. info and justgiving.com/fundraising/ michael-herz