Heartbreaking final words of teen who slipped into world's longest coma and never woke up
Edwarda O'Bara fell into the world's longest coma, her final words were a plea to her family
On 3 January, 1970 a teenager fell into a coma and never woke up again, but it would be several decades before she died.
16-year-old Edwarda O'Bara had contracted pneumonia a month earlier and over the next two weeks, she started to feel worse.
The teenager was diabetic and the insulin she was taking wasn't reaching her bloodstream, and on the day she fell into a coma she had been shaking in pain.
Her parents, who on that day were marking their 22nd wedding anniversary, rushed her to hospital where she slipped into a diabetic coma.
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Before she did her final words to her family were asking her mother Kaye to 'promise you won't leave me'.
"Of course not. I would never leave you, darling," was her mother's response, and shortly afterwards the 16-year-old fell into the coma from which she would not wake.
Her parents continued to be regular fixtures by her bedside, with her mother turning her regularly to prevent bedsores as well as passing the time by reading, playing music and talking to her comatose daughter.
With Edwarda being fed through a tube she needed constant care, and the girl's father Joe worked multiple jobs to help fund his daughter's medical bills, though he died of a heart attack a few years later.
Kaye would live until she was 81 and died at the age of 2008, having kept her promise as she continued to care for her daughter for the rest of her life.
After Kaye passed away care for Edwarda continued to be provided for by her sister Colleen, who quit her job to become the woman's carer.
Edwarda would die in 2012 at the age of 59, having spent over 42 years in the coma that she didn't wake up from.
After she died many people visited the family home to pay their respects.
Speaking to CNN, Colleen said that she'd bathed her sister, fed her and sorted her hair out and went to get a cup of coffee, then found Edwarda dead by the time she returned to her bedside.
According to The Sun, there were some who did not support the family looking after Edwarda for as long as they did, and a group called the Hemlock Society would phone the O'Bara family home trying to urge her family to let her die.
On Boxing Day, 1981 the girl's mother got a call from an unknown individual who said they were coming to the house to kill Edwarda.
A few hours later multiple shots were fired at the house, though nobody was hurt in the incident.
Joe Harker