Brain haemorrhage survivor defies odds

A WOMAN who was left unable to read or write after a massive brain haemorrhage has fought her way back to university.

Rhian Johns, 24, was given just 12 hours to live after a blood clot burst in her brain. She defied the odds to survive but woke up from a five-week coma unable to walk, eat or speak.

The student was forced to quit her course and had to relearn how to read and write from scratch.

However, she has amazed her family by returning to university to start a fashion management degree.

Ms Johns, from Bieldside, Aberdeen, was a healthy young woman until she started getting painful migraines in February 2006.

The headaches increasingly worsened until she was eventually rushed to hospital, where it was discovered she had had a brain haemorrhage.

Her mother, Iris, said: "We were told Rhian had just 12 hours to live, that we'd be lucky if she survived the night. I was by her side all day and night for a week, it was terrifying."

Ms Johns was given drugs which put her into a coma for five weeks. While still in her coma, she caught pneumonia and a lung infection, which collapsed both her lungs.

When she finally opened her eyes, she could not speak, walk or talk, and had to learn how to eat again. She slowly learned to chew and swallow food again after six weeks and, with the help of a physiotherapist, could walk across the room in ten weeks.

Speaking was more difficult, but she he used charades and slowly built up her language again. With the help of trained teachers and the primary school books her mother borrowed from a teacher friend, she slowly learned to read again.

Ms Johns has now been accepted on to a new four-year BA fashion course at Robert Gordon University.

She credits her recovery to Momentum, which helps people with brain injuries back to education and work, and has so far raised 32,000 for the charity.