Beiruting News

A mother has described how she heard a doctor asking her husband about switching off her life-support as she lay in a medically-induced coma after collapsing from a rare condition.

Jenny Bone, who was feared to have catastrophic brain damage after going into cardiac arrest, lay listening to the life-or-death conversation but was paralysed and unable to intervene.

She recalls her husband John ruling out ending her life - despite a previous conversation when she said she wanted to die if incapacitated permanently. The 40-year-old later recovered and now says she is relieved he went against her wishes.

I was aware of conversations around me,' she said. 'The most frequent one was being turned in the bed. A familiar "ready, steady, turn" would come from the nurses.

'The most alarming was between a doctor and my husband enquiring as to my wishes surrounding being kept alive on a ventilator and that they were unsure whether my mental ability had been impaired due to lack of oxygen while they were attempting to restart my heart.