Experience: I help coma survivors fill in the gaps

For Covid patients, it was like waking up in an alien world. One wanted the football on TV, and there was none

When people wake from a coma, their first questions are usually, “How long was I asleep?” and, “What did they do to me?” It’s my job to fill in the blanks and get them fully functioning again.

I’m a physiotherapist in intensive care at Morriston hospital, Swansea. As a teenager, I was sporty and imagined that if I trained as a physio, I’d get to work with sports injuries. But after graduating, I did stints on the wards, in orthopaedics, paediatrics and critical care. Working with a hospital’s most unwell patients, to help them breathe and rehabilitate, was what I found most rewarding.

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