35 years ago when I gave birth to my first and only baby, a beautiful baby girl, the nurse in the hospital passed a deadly virus on her and she went in coma. At her 9 days she sank into  clinical death for 5 days. Although doctors sent me home trying to console me by telling me that at my 26 I am young enough to have more children as this one may not survive, I was so determined that my baby girl lives that I even threatened them.

After 5 days she came out of coma and life seemed to take its normal course. At her year and half she was so smart and lively that I even managed to put that horrible experience behind me. But then, one day, she  stayed at my friends and poured a hot water over her arm. A burn was so deep that she had to be urgently operated. As she went into total narcosis she was lost again. The early after-birth experience was back in track – another clinical death, only this time the odds that she would come back were less than the first time. Doctors struggled real hard to wake her up and when they did the result was a complete memory loss. In her perception her mother died and I was a goodhearted lady who felt pity over her and came to hospital to take her home with me.

So the struggle for her emotional sanity began. Fears of all kinds, panic attacks, paranoia were our everyday meal. She would fall in crisis and cry for hours begging me to take her to her mummy. Where do I take her when I am her mum and she doesn’t recognize me?

Psychiatrics and psychologists couldn’t help in any other way but putting her on medications they strongly instructed me to do so because the constant anxiety might eat up her physical body. I couldn’t make mayself do it  so I started digging up to find some other way out of this tragedy. I’ve learned all there was to be learned about official and unofficial medicine, whatever  psychiatry and psychology offered to help her out, but there were  no clues.

One morning, when Ivana finally fell asleap after all- night struggle with her fears, I sat on my balcony.- exhausted and done! As the new day was pouring  its first rays of dawn I felt so helpless, facing the wide holly wall of hopelessness. I din’t think or feel anything. I was desperate and numb.