Fabrice Muamba: I'm Still Standing Page 14

  And before anyone knows it I start to stir.

  Waking up from a coma takes time. Your brain is rebooting itself slowly. Dr Mohiddin cannot believe I’ve started to come around so quickly, in fact he didn’t expect me to wake up today, if at all.

  But there’s no switch that can be instantly flicked, no lights immediately come on, I don’t get up and start dancing.

  And just because I’m now awake doesn’t mean I’m out of the woods yet. Shauna comes in again and my eyes are rolling around in my head.

  This is a bad sign. This is a bad sign.

  ‘Well that’s it now then,’ she thinks, as calm as anything but at the same time terrified. ‘He’s brain damaged.’

  That thought barely lasts a second though as the doctor who accompanies her into intensive care sets to work.

  “Fabrice,” the doctor whispers.

  And I move my head to my right, searching for the face that just mentioned my name.

  I’ve responded.

  I’m alive. I’m not brain damaged. I’M A MIRACLE.

  #13

  Second Life

  WAKING up in hospital was the strangest day of my life. I felt like my head was a pillow – big and soft and cloudy. What am I doing in a hospital? It felt like a dream, as if I’d fallen into a deep sleep and then didn’t know where I was when I woke up.

  It was like the weirdest sleepwalk. Except, of course, I wasn’t walking. You try walking when you’re hooked up to every hospital machine in England. I couldn’t move. My body was telling me that moving at that moment was a very, very bad idea. Where am I?

  As I opened my eyes I’ve never, EVER felt worse. Think of the worst hangover you’ve ever had then add a whole new level on top. Groggy, exhausted, useless.

  It felt like I was dying. I looked down and saw this hospital gown covering me up. Two big pillows and a hospital gown? Is this a wind up? I couldn’t even begin to understand this situation.

  What is going on here?

  I looked around to my left and right, trying to absorb the noises, and work out where I was. Where am I? Just total confusion. I had a head full of fluff but I looked again to my right to see Shauna.

  Eh? What is Shauna doing here? What am I doing here? Where is ‘here’ anyhow?

  Question, questions, questions.

  “Where is Josh?” were my first whispered words. “Where am I? What happened? Is Josh ok?”

  My skin felt like it wasn’t part of my body. At that moment in time, somebody had stolen my arms and legs and my brain felt brainless. I’d had better days.

  I then moved my right hand up to my nose to remove my oxygen mask and croaked out “what’s going on?” Shauna, being the boss, soon put me straight. “Put the mask back on and I will tell you what happened,” she said.

  I did what she asked and she told me I had collapsed playing football at White Hart Lane and that I hadn’t been breathing for 78 minutes before coming back.

  Ha ha, whatever. For real?

  Me? I don’t collapse. There ain’t nobody in the Premier League as fit as Fabrice Muamba.

  I pulled the mask back down and slowly repeated what Shauna had said. “Me? Collapsed?” I thought there was a joke going on.

  “Really?” and she answered “yeah, really.”

  And then – bang – I passed out again. I suppose I thought I better try and get back to sleep so I could wake up from this dream. You don’t come round straight away from something like this. Your body warms back up in stages and I was constantly drifting off, sometimes being ok and other times waking up clueless.

  Later on in the first day of my second life, two strangers came into my room and stood next to my bed. Dr Mohiddin, a bloke I would come to know as Dr Sam, and his colleague Dr Deaner tried to explain to me what had happened.

  Who is this guy? Who is speaking to me? When does the second half start? I’m still convinced this is a joke and that none of this is actually happening.

  Dr Deaner stood close to me and said: “I’ve heard you’re a good footballer,” and I said: “I try to be, I’m ok.”

  He then whispered what had happened and what treatment I had received. I wasn’t listening. I was wondering who was behind this stitch-up.

  Dr Deaner had tears in his eyes and Dr Sam was the same. Whoever these men were, they really seemed to be caring for me, which was nice.

  Where am I again? In hospital? For real?

  After Dr Deaner left, Dad came in into the room and did his best to put me at ease.

  I cannot tell you how scary it is when you’re in a dream that won’t end. I wanted to know where, who, why, when – I wanted some answers and some answers fast.

  “Are you ok?” dad asked. “How are you feeling?”

  I told him I was ok and that I was just confused.

  “Don’t worry, it will all become clear,” he said. “Just concentrate on getting better. God has saved you from this mess and when you start recovering I will explain everything.”

  Next thing I know dad left and Aunt Fifi walked in. I went through the same process again, asking what was going on, but she repeated, almost word for word, what dad had said.

  “Relax, recover, we will tell you all about it later on. You are a miracle boy – this is unbelievable.”

  That wasn’t good enough and I wanted some answers quicker than that. If I was a miracle then tell me why. Stop telling me later, later, later. I wanted to know what was happening. Tell me now.

  The early stages followed the same pattern.

  “Shauna, Shauna, what happened?”

  “You collapsed and had a cardiac arrest,” she would answer.

  “For real?”

  “Yes, for real.”

  That scene was played out every two minutes.

  I had so many drugs in me I could barely stay awake for an hour. I would hang on for as long as I could before slipping away. Oh my God, I was so weak. As weak as a baby.

  Shauna was amazing throughout all of this. She kept coming back in and telling me it was all going to be ok. She knew something I didn’t.

  Where am I again? In hospital? For real?

  As well as being confused I was hooked up to every sort of drip, kidney machine, heart monitor – you name it. It looked like somebody had died in there.

  The gaffer came in at one point to see how I was doing. I noticed that the tie he was wearing wasn’t the official club tie that is used on matchdays. It was a slightly different style.

  I’ve only just woken up from 78 minutes of nothing plus a medical coma and I’m able to spot the difference in the gaffer’s tie from the other side of the room. He had tears in his eyes too. He just couldn’t work out why I looked ok.

  Where am I again? In hospital? For real?

  Others drifted in and out while I drifted in and out. Shauna brought Phil Mason in at some point on the first day and I immediately knew who he was. “Fab, the club chaplain is here,” she said.

  “Phil!’ was my response as I turned my head on the pillow. “How are you?” He was close to tears too. Why is everyone crying?

  Where am I again? In hospital? For real?

  The last person I can remember coming into my room on that first day was Warwick.

  “Are you ok mate?” he said.

  “Yeah, I am – but what is going on?”

  Me and Warwick are so close, he’s like my second father. He is my agent first of all but he is a good man who knows me inside out and I owe him and all the guys at Key Sports Management so much. I found out later how much he and his team had done for me. If I’d known then I would’ve tried to get up and hug him.

  I was so high on drugs that I could barely register who came in to see me and when. Johan Djorou was one of those and we spoke for a bit. “What’s happening?” he said. “Nothing much,” I replied. It was just like two mates chatting. I asked him for answers too but he didn’t know anything either.

  I didn’t know at the time but in the corridor outside the intensive care uni
t there were doctors, nurses and all my family and friends amazed that I was alive and responding to their questions.

  You’ve got to remember that if you fall off a ladder or you are in a bus crash or whatever, when you wake up you can probably remember a little bit of the build up to what happened. You can slowly piece together the past so you can work out why you’re in a hospital bed. But I had none of that luck. I’d gone from kicking a football around to being surrounded by people crying just because when they asked me how I was I told them I was “ok.”

  It doesn’t get much weirder than that and it really freaked me out.

  Where am I again? In hospital? For real?

  By the end of the first day my heart had already begun to show signs that it was completely back to normal. My heartbeat was strong and secure and the doctors were not really too concerned about it any longer. Of course, that didn’t stop them doing an amazing job looking after me, I just mean that I had bigger problems elsewhere. Like my kidneys.

  A total of 15 shocks before I arrived at hospital, plus the same number again in the cath lab, came at a cost and that cost was muscle. Tons of it.

  During a cardiac arrest a huge amount of muscle can be damaged very quickly and those muscle fibres break down into the bloodstream. Dr Sam told me one day that the official name for it is ‘rhabdomyolysis.’ I think I’ll stick with ‘damaged muscle’.

  Normally, your kidneys would be able to cope with all this extra hard work because that is what they do best; they clean out all the bad stuff in your blood.

  But my kidneys had stopped working, just like the rest of me, and their filters were clogged up with all this new wasted muscle fibre. That meant I couldn’t pee and I was placed on dialysis, through a big tube in my neck, which took the pressure off my kidneys and gave them a chance to heal themselves.

  When you’re out for the count as long as I was, your body basically closes down. Why wouldn’t it? It thinks you’re dead. After your brain, your kidneys suffer the most when they have no oxygen. I didn’t have a clue about any of this at the time. I was to spend a month learning the hard way that your kidneys can cause you real troubles.

  Dr Sam came in and stood over my bed and said “we will do all we can to make you better, the only thing holding you back is your kidneys.” He told me it was early stages yet but he gave me the confidence that I would get back on my feet.

  Where am I again? In hospital? For real?

  My memory problems continued during that first week and I started getting on my own nerves, never mind anyone else’s. My brain was wiped clean every time I went to sleep, every time I was put to bed for the night. Shauna would leave the room for two minutes and when she came back in I would be back to where we started. Her patience was brilliant until she finally decided to sort it out once and for all.

  FABRICE MUAMBA,

  MARCH 23,

  LONDON CHEST HOSPITAL,

  COLLAPSED PLAYING

  FOOTBALL

  The words, written in felt tip, were big and bold on a whiteboard at the end of my bed. Shauna and my doctors had decided I could answer my own questions.

  There were photos of me with Shauna, plus snaps of Joshua on the whiteboard, which all made me realise and remember what I had and who I was.

  During those first days, playing football again was not on anyone’s mind. I had nothing on my mind at all actually – I was still totally out of it. My main concern was just to get better, even if I was still frustrated with the lack of straight answers.

  Nobody could tell me what had happened because nobody knew why I’d collapsed.

  It remains that way to this day. All the expertise and science and whatever in the world and my cardiac arrest is as big a mystery now as it was when I hit the pitch at White Hart Lane.

  Dr Sam tried his best to explain my situation and he gave me the faith to believe I would improve.

  He put things into my language and would speak to me on my own. I was just incredibly frustrated and angry with everything. How dare this happen to me?

  What had I done to deserve this?

  As I slowly improved and could stay awake for longer, I knew it was time to try and get out of bed.

  To begin to get my life back.

  #14

  Starting Over

  I REMEMBER trying to move properly for the first time and it seemed like the most important thing I’d ever done. Me and Shauna were in the room and she said she would be there to help teach me how to walk again.

  I wanted to get out of bed after less than a week but I had to wait to be given permission. Eventually Dr Sam told me I could try.

  I wished I’d never asked.

  Shauna sat next to me and she tried to give me all the encouragement I would need. “Just swing your legs around to the right, I will catch you,” she said.

  It was as simple as that. Five minutes ago I was a midfielder in the Premier League, one of the fittest guys in the country, and now my only goal is to try and swing out of bed and stand up.

  Even though Shauna was right next to me supporting me I was scared about trying to get up which didn’t help. Not only was my body hurting but my brain was as well. What if it happened again? What if my heart failed me for the second time? It was a terrifying moment that played on my mind.

  I don’t want to die, not here, not again.

  It was so hard. My whole body was screaming in pain and aches. I can remember my muscles were shaking and I was sweating.

  I was starting again. I was like a baby.

  “Try and move your leg,” Shauna said.

  “I’m trying, I’m trying,” I snapped back in frustration. But she took it slowly and she helped me brilliantly, encouraging me by holding my hand and trying to make the atmosphere nice and relaxed.

  I finally managed to swing around and hauled myself onto my feet. I can remember now how cold the hospital floor was, how weird it felt to be standing, how dizzy I felt, how much I needed Shauna’s help and support.

  I stood for about a minute and then collapsed back on the bed, completely exhausted. I stood up five times that day. That was it. Stand up, wait 60 seconds, lie down. To look at me you would’ve thought I’d run a marathon.

  Although physically I was exhausted I was also really pleased. That was the start of my comeback and they may only have been tiny, tiny steps, but you’ve got to start somewhere. I had to piece all these bits together and begin again. It was about getting my confidence back and proving to myself that I was alive and well.

  Somehow, I was alive and well – apart from my kidneys.

  I was trying to eat and drink normally but the wastes from what I was drinking weren’t going anywhere. My face, hands and toes became so swollen because I couldn’t get rid of all the fluid my body was creating. I became so fat! All this stuff was building up and I was worried about what I looked like. I didn’t want to scare the ton of visitors I had, especially during that first week, even if I wasn’t allowed to see most of them.

  Ashley Cole, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Gary Cahill, Emmanuel Adebayor and Michael Essien all came to the hospital but never got up the stairs to intensive care. There were just too many people, too much stress and noise for the staff there, too much publicity going on at the time. Most players who turned up were greeted in a side room by dad or Warwick and thanked for turning up. It was truly appreciated then and now. But, practically speaking, the hospital couldn’t cope with so many wanting to say ‘hi’ so the side room downstairs became like a second waiting room. Cousins and friends from school would show up and whoever was free would go down and explain the situation, then people would leave.

  Thierry Henry visited on the Tuesday of the first week – the only problem is I was so out of it I had no idea he had even been.

  Eh? Thierry? Whatever. Shut up. He lives in America.

  It took some convincing to be told that he had raced across the Atlantic to see me. I couldn’t remember a thing. We were chatting the day before it happened and then dad
came in and said “Thierry has been here.”

  “Has he?” I said. He’d heard about what had happened and immediately flown all the way from New York and I couldn’t even remember it. This legend of the game, the guy who once took the piss out of me as a young teenager, flew all the way from America just to show he cared. Nobody knew he had been to see me. He snuck in through the back door of the hospital, met Shauna and dad and everyone else, then snuck away again just as quickly.

  That shows you what kind of guy he is, what kind of man he is. He flew straight back to America after the visit and wore an armband with my name on it when the New York Red Bulls played the Colorado Rapids in their next game. He scored twice so I obviously brought him some luck! When I went back to New York in June he gave me that armband and we had a laugh and a joke about everything. I admire him so much – too much!

  James Vaughan was a regular visitor and some of the Bolton guys also came in during that first week and they really lifted my spirits. The goalkeeper Rob Lainton came in to see me. He is a good bloke who I’ve grown close to. He was so relieved to find me looking ok and we both got emotional about the situation.

  Zat Knight and Nigel Reo-Coker also said ‘hi’. The last time they’d seen me I’d been having my chest pumped in public. Their visit remains a hazy memory but I remember Nigel telling me how pleased all the guys were that I was fighting hard.

  “I’m glad you’re back,” he said. “You’re back with us. You worried us for a bit.”

  Liam Brady from Arsenal came in to keep his eye on me, the same as he had always done. “How are you doing?” he asked. I told him I was fine and thanked him for his support. He told me to ring him if I needed anything. You don’t realise how many people you know or how generous they can be until something like this happens.