Vietnam coma Scot Mekala Osborne out of hospital after 15 months
An Edinburgh fitness instructor who contracted a deadly virus on holiday has finally been released from hospital, 15 months after falling ill.
Mekala Osborne caught the bug while travelling in Vietnam and Cambodia in September 2019. She was put into a coma in a Vietnamese hospital after her condition deteriorated so badly her family was told she had a 5% chance of survival. The 23-year-old spent over a year recovering in hospital in Scotland. She was released just before Christmas, but still has a long road of physiotherapy and rehab ahead of her. Reflecting on the experience, she said she was three weeks into her tour of South East Asia with friends when she developed a sore throat. She bought a facemask to protect her from germs and some Strepsils for her throat, but within 24 hours she was in hospital fighting a virus which doctors described as similar to pneumonia. "It was just general flu symptoms... Then in one day it got really bad. "I couldn't feel my legs. I fell asleep, and when I woke up I was coughing up blood. "A lot of it's just a blur from there," Mekala added. Her mum, Yvonne McAulay, said Mekala had been very upbeat when they last spoke. Then Mekala sent her a picture, and she was on oxygen. Shortly after that she got a phone call to say her daughter was in intensive care in a coma and she was summoned from Edinburgh to Danang. When Yvonne saw her daughter in hospital, she thought Mekala was going to die. But when she was moved to Singapore by her travel insurers, her mother said things started to look less bleak. Mekala was taken to a specialist at Mount Elizabeth Hospital where a consultant studied her travel itinerary and identified her illness as an airborne virus picked up in a forest in Cambodia. While in the induced coma, however, her condition slowly improved. After two weeks she was woken, and a week later she was off life support. After two months in hospital, Mekala was moved on to a portable ventilator before being flown back to the UK in November 2019. Doctors in Scotland said she was still "in a bad way", and her mum was warned it was still "touch and go". Things improved slowly - and then the pandemic hit. It meant Mekala was moved from ICU in Edinburgh to a rehab hospital, where she spent the last nine months. There, she re-learned things she had previously taken for granted, like how to walk. But she said not being able to have visitors was good motivation to get well as quickly as possible, so she could get back to her family and friends. She told Radio Scotland she was released shortly before Christmas. It was "incredible" to get out of hospital, and Mekala says she still pinches herself when she realises she's home. "It's a moment I'll remember forever," she said.