As doctors continue their efforts to bring Michael Schumacher out of his coma, it will be a stressful and frightening period for close relatives watching his recovery.
Michael Schumacher’s wife Corinna has spent the past five weeks by the seven-time Formula 1 champion’s bedside.
Initially staying at a hotel close to Grenoble hospital, she is now understood to be making daily 100-mile (175km) journeys from the family’s home near Gland in Switzerland. She has been joined by other relatives including her husband’s racing-driver brother Ralf Schumacher and the couple’s children, Gina Marie, 16, and Mick, 14, who was skiing with his father when he fell and hit his head on a rock on 29 December 2013.
While some fans are already turning to social media to celebrate unconfirmed reports that Michael Schumacher has started blinking and responding to reflex tests, his family is under immense pressure as they observe the doctors trying to communicate with him.
“Waking from a coma is not like how it is portrayed in the movies,” says Luke Griggs, spokesman for Headway, the UK’s leading charity for people living with brain injuries.
“It can be a very gradual process that can take several days or weeks. For the family, the initial fear about whether or not the individual will survive is replaced by fear of what the future will hold and what level of recovery their loved one will make.”
Patients usually start by opening their eyes, then responding to pain and finally by reacting to people talking to them.
It is a sequence of events that is a vivid recent memory for Mark Smith, a British paramedic whose 16-year-old son Ryan was in a medically induced coma after a cycling accident in July 2013. He remains in hospital where he is being treated for physical and mental health problems.
“Unfortunately the public perception is that people just wake up and start their everyday activities after a couple of days. That’s not the case. It is very slow; there are no finite answers. You just have to stay hopeful that you will get interaction back one day.”
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