“After 7 months in an induced coma, my husband woke up and did not recognize me, he thought I was an impostor”

Abi Morgan, renowned British screenwriter of films such as “The Iron Lady” and “The Suffragettes”, remembers the shock she felt when her husband woke up from an induced coma and did not recognize her: “I thought I was an impostor”.

His nightmare began in June 2018 and like most stories of catastrophe and loss, it did so on a day like any other. Her now-husband, actor Jacob Krichefski, who has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis since 2011, woke up that day with a severe headache. Nothing seemed to predict what would come next.

“When I went up to the room on the top floor of the house I found him lying on the bathroom floor. He was semi-conscious, but in a clearly very disoriented state,” Morgan recounts on Emily Webb’s “Lives Less Ordinary” BBC podcast.

It was the first time something like this had happened and he was quickly transferred to the hospital.

“In the hospital I saw that it was something serious, although he had already come to his senses. They did an MRI”, he recalls about the first hours of what would end up being one of the hardest moments of his life and that he would later collect in his first book, “This Is Not a Pity Memoir”where he tells everything that happened to his family between June 2018 and June 2021.

Treatment

At first, the doctors could not find the problem. “When the scan results came back they said everything was fine and it was probably an infection. They said they would keep an eye on him.”

However, it did not improve. Quite the contrary. Her husband had seizures and increasingly strange behaviorBut they couldn’t figure out what was going on. “That week I asked a doctor if she was going to die and she said, yes, she can die. That was the moment when I thought, ‘Oh my god.’”

Admitted to the intensive care unit, they discovered that he had a type of brain swelling called anti-NDMA receptor encephalitis, but the drugs didn’t seem to work. His blood pressure was fluctuating and her breathing was becoming more difficult.

“In the second week the doctors said that the only way for him to stay alive and stable was to put him in an induced coma”Morgan explains about a coma from which he won’t wake up for seven months. “That way they could control their functions while trying to cure the encephalitis,” he adds.

“The risk of putting yourself in a coma is not waking up again. But at that time the benefits outweighed the risks. Jacob was not going to survive if they couldn’t monitor his blood pressure and other vital signs. I thought you had to trust the doctors.”

It would be months before the doctors discovered that his collapse was due to a drug he was being given for multiple sclerosis as part of a trial of which he was a part.

The awakening

He was put into a coma at the end of June 2018 and woke up at the end of January 2019. Far from what one might think, when Jacob wakes up it is not the end of the story. Another story has just begun.

“A doctor once warned me that when I woke up it was going to be very difficult because I was going to be a completely different person,” she says. “I had been warned that he was going to be different, the surprise was that in the first three days he seemed to be Jacob. The anesthesia takes several days to wear off,” he explains of the first few days in which he just seemed a bit disoriented.

Morgan went from the excitement and happiness of seeing him awake again to noticing slight differences in attitude with her. “One day some friends came and he told me: ‘You can go now. You can wait outside ‘and the way she said it you could tell it wasn’t something she said to someone she knew”.

“One day the family came. I walked into the room and everyone was very happy to see me. I recorded everything. Every time I said something I looked at the camera and you realized that something was not right. She irritated him. At first I thought it was just something that was a bit grumpy, that I had to process a lot of things”.

“But then Valentine’s Day came. By then he had already been awake for more than a month, ”he indicates about Valentine’s Day, for which occasion he bought a heart-shaped balloon. “The nurses had roses and they gave one to Jacob and said, ‘Give your wife a rose.’ To which Jacob replied: ‘That’s not my wife’”.

Morgan admits that at first, although she was shocked, thought i was kidding, because they were not really married, although they have been together for more than two decades and have two children. He couldn’t believe that this was actually happening. “I could not stop shaking. She was shocked”.

an impostor

Later, it was confirmed that he did not believe that she was Aby Morgan, but an impostor. “She once took my brother aside at one point and asked him if she thought she was Aby Morgan, because she wasn’t. My brother replied: ‘I can see that you don’t believe it, but yes, it’s my sister Aby Morgan’”.

It was then that he asked directly where he thought the real Aby Morgan was, to which Jacob replied without a shadow of a doubt that she was gone and had a new life with someone else. Likewise, he did not hesitate to describe her as a different woman: tall, with black hair and blue eyes. “That was why he couldn’t recognize me in the photos.”

A neuroscientist they contacted explained that suffered from Capgras syndromewhich is the delusion in which someone, usually a family member, is believed to have been replaced by an impostor.

“I was furious, but with the full determination that somehow I was going to find a way to make him see that this was not rational,” she says of an event that only happened with her. The rest she recognized without problems.

Over time began to assume that Morgan was part of his environment and “tolerate” her. “What I really hated was when people told me: ‘Well, now you can fall in love again'”.

To facilitate his recovery, he decided to tell him that he was someone the State had hired to help him and his children. “Otherwise I couldn’t understand why he kept coming every day and taking care of his children.”

“When you’re faced with someone’s mortality, you’ll do anything to keep them alive,” she explains of her decision to accept her new role in her partner’s life.

Back home

Jacob’s rehabilitation lasted months. Finally, in September 2019, Jacob was able to return home, but required 24-hour care. It would take about seven more months, since she returned to her house, to recognize her partner again.

“When he had a good day he was 10% of himself. He was a completely different person,” he recalls of those tough months. “I desperately missed the other Jacob. I think we all did.”

As if her husband’s situation wasn’t bad enough, a bell “rings” inside Morgan in April 2019, shortly after Jacob has come out of his coma, but while he is still in the hospital. Something is wrong. She doesn’t feel well either.

“I started experiencing terrible chest pain and decided to go to a cancer clinic. In less than two weeks I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I remember thinking that I had been so focused on Jacob’s mortality that I had forgotten about my own mortality,” she comments.

“I had a mastectomy and a six-centimeter cancer was removed. I was very lucky. It had not spread to my lymph nodes. I received 24 weeks of chemo and radiotherapy for months, ”he adds about a treatment that ended in March 2020, shortly before the covid pandemic began.

Now those months are behind us. Jacob is already 99% himself and does not need any more daily care. Likewise, they were married at the end of May 2021. “Nothing glamorous. A time to bring our families together.”