Mother of 3 woke from a coma thinking she was 15. Years of her life are still out of memory's reach

Seven years ago, Katrina O'Neil was playing baseball when she went into cardiac arrest and was without oxygen for 22 minutes.

Then only 29 years old, she went into a coma for three weeks. When she woke up, she thought she was 15.

"I didn't really recognize the people around me," said O'Neil, who moved to Fredericton four years ago but was living in Cambridge, Ont., at the time of her cardiac arrest. "I reverted back to being a child and just wanted my mom right there. Because that's what my brain was telling me — that I was just a child."

Most of O'Neil's memories of the missing 13 years remain lost.

Her story is now told in a new documentary called Losing Yourself, which is being shown on Accessible Media Inc., by Fredericton filmmaker Robert Gow.

Gow, who runs the production company Vulture's Bluff Productions, played on the same sports team with O'Neil after he moved to Fredericton two years ago. At a bar one night, O'Neil told him her story, and a few months later, he asked her if she would be willing to share it publicly.

"The story came out and I was kind of stunned," Gow said. "And I sat on it for a few months. And then I thought, you know, this would make a really great documentary. And we went from there."

O'Neil said that when Gow asked if she would share her story, her first thought was that nobody would want to hear it. But she was also excited and a little scared to show people what she had been through.

When she woke up from her coma, O'Neil said, she felt confused because she had lost 13 years of memory. She also had trouble retaining information at first.

Reverting back to when she was 15 years old meant O'Neil didn't remember her three children or their births.

They were one, seven and 10 years old when the coma happened.

Dr. Howard Chertkow, a cognitive neurologist and the senior scientist at Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest Centre in Toronto, said a situation like O'Neil's is rare, but it isn't unheard of.

He said he once had a patient with an almost identical story.

Chertkow said the hippocampus, a complex brain structure in the temporal lobe that plays a big role in memory, was likely affected by the lack of oxygen.