Going to the hospital for asthma treatment turned into a nightmare for 27-year-old Barbara Maya. A medical student woke up 36 days later with an amputated arm and a diagnosis of an autoimmune disease.

The student told on video how he considered asthma to be a rare syndrome – Photo: @barbaramaia68/ Tiktok/ Reproduction/ ND

Information from the Viva Bem website, on the UOL portal. The case began on May 7 in Belo Horizonte. Maya was preparing to begin her internship, which is the training phase of the medical course.

However, the internship was postponed after the student was diagnosed with antiphospholipid syndrome (APS), also known as “thick blood” syndrome.

The syndrome is known to cause frequent blood clots throughout the body. Barbara says that in her case, the disease affected her lung, right arm and head.

The student says she was diagnosed with asthma many years ago and when she began to feel short of breath, she thought it was caused by the disease. What started as shortness of breath led to two strokes, a tracheostomy and the amputation of one arm for a young woman who dreams of becoming a surgeon.

When she took medication to control a suspected asthma attack and it didn’t help, the student decided to go to the hospital.

“There I took medicine [para asma] and the symptoms stopped. I went home, but soon felt very short of breath again, couldn’t even go to class, and decided to go back to the emergency room,” he recalls.

Unable to even order a taxi, Varvara turned to her mother for help, who called an ambulance. During a new trip to the hospital, doctors determined that the young woman needed oxygen, but could not stabilize her condition. That’s when they decided to intubate her.

The student woke up 36 days later, still in the intensive care unit, without her right arm. While in a coma, she also experienced complications caused by the hospitalization itself, such as kidney failure and intestinal bleeding. Maya said she received 13 bags of blood to replace what she lost.

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@barbaramaia68

Hello guys, my name is Barbara, I am 27 years old, I am an 8th year medical student in Belo Horizonte and I need a prosthesis that is suitable for my future profession ♥️. For more information, visit @barbramaia on Instagram #health #medicine #prosthetics

♬ original sound – Barbara Maya

Thick blood syndrome, which is confused with asthma, is rare and difficult to diagnose.

Helena Visnadi, hematologist at San Luis Analia Franco Hospital, listening to UOL, explains that APS is a rare autoimmune disease, non-hereditary and much more common in women.

The diagnosis is difficult and usually occurs after complications, as in Barbara’s case, when it was mistaken for asthma.

“There are patients who are admitted with a history of repeated miscarriages, we will conduct an investigation and detect this syndrome. But there are also simultaneous thromboses, like hers, which we can classify as catastrophic APS,” he explains.

Visnadi also makes it clear that the first episode of thrombosis is not enough to suggest the disease. According to the doctor, usually the protocol for testing for the presence of antibodies to APS begins only with the second appearance.

“And it is important that this episode is not “provoked”, so that it does not occur after surgery or immobilization – for example, when the leg is in a cast. The question is when thrombosis appears out of nowhere,” explains Visnadi.

After the first positive result for APS, the test is still repeated six weeks after the blood clot to make an accurate diagnosis, which further slows down the treatment process.