Online Reporter
LONDON — Dying doesn’t normally give a person new life — yet that is exactly what happened to Patrick Charnley.
He was a high-flying lawyer, who viewed downtime as “wasted time”, restlessly pushing himself to success.
But working long hours during the pandemic in 2021, the ultra-fit father-of-two suffered a cardiac arrest aged 39.
What began as an unremarkable evening eating sausage and chips on the sofa ended with him collapsing unconscious.
Triggered by a hereditary condition, his heart stopped.
Patrick was clinically dead for 40 minutes.
Then suddenly his heart began beating again.
Patrick awoke from his week-long coma a changed man, with a brain injury that affects his sight, memory and stamina.
Unable to work and live as he did before, he feels it’s allowed him to be more present in life and relationships.
It’s a perspective shift, he tells Emma Barnett’s Ready To Talk podcast, that he “wouldn’t change” — even if given the chance to return to his old life.
“I woke up blind,” says Patrick of his first waking memory. “I was experiencing these things, but not really connecting with them.”
The loss of his eyesight sparked vivid hallucinations.
Known as Charles Bonnet Syndrome, the phenomenon is the brain’s way of “filling in” sudden missing visual data.
While some of these were “frightening” he says others felt “great” and strangely beautiful.
In one, after his open heart surgery, he became convinced an American nurse was trying to murder him.
As his vision slowly returned, doctors realised his sight issues were linked to a brain injury. His eyesight remains partially impaired, comparable to “looking through a telescope”.
Initial cognitive tests put him in the bottom 2 percent across memory and processing speed. Although vastly improved, he still has significant cognitive problems.
But the full impact of his injuries only became apparent once he returned home.
Patrick found he “didn’t care about anything” after his initial recovery.
“I sort of live as if I’m really very, very old.”
“I live life slowly now, not by choice, but because I have to. But I really appreciate that. I do see the beauty in things much more than I used to . . . I feel like I live a much richer existence by being slower,” he says.
“My perspective has fundamentally altered. I feel grateful to be alive”.
His relationship with his family has also changed for the better. — BBC
