Kononova: refused to die!

By Nehru Odeh

She could have been buried by now but she chose to live. This is the story of 81 year-old Russian woman, Zinaida Kononova who, after being confirmed dead by medical doctors and placed in a morgue, came back to life after spending a night there.

According to Daily Mail, the woman, a pensioner, was declared dead after surgery to remove intestinal obstruction at Gorshechensky Central District Hospital in Russia on 14 August 2020.

She was then placed in a morgue after about one hour 20 minutes, where she spent the night, presumed dead.. But a morgue worker got the shock of her life when she resumed work the following morning and saw her sprawled on the table.

The intriguing thing about her recovery is that as she attempted to climb off the morgue table and escape she fell. An ambulance driver who overhead a noise as he entered the building narrated how the frightened morgue worker said: “Grandma, lie down, granny, be quiet.”

The ambulance driver had thought the morgue worker had gone crazy but thought otherwise when he saw the pensioner grab the woman’s hand pleading for help. Kononova was then covered in Blankets and rushed to intensive care.

When the hospital called her niece, Tatiana Kulikova, a senior doctor told her: “We have an unusual situation. She is alive!” Kulikova, delighted that her aunt was alive, asked the doctors: “How could this happen?” But she was told her aunt had been registered as clinically dead for 15 minutes, and was “literally pulled back from the other world”.

“She initially did not recognize me or recall that she had a surgery. But she talked about her old knee problem,” Kulikova said.

A doctor and anesthetist later confessed they had taken Kononova to the morgue one hour and 20 minutes after she died, instead of two hours as rules dictate.

Still, there have been a casualty from the fall-out, as the Chief Doctor of Gorshechensky Central District Hospital, Roman Kondratenko, has been suspended pending an investigation.

However, Kononova’s relatives are planning to sue the hospital. But acting hospital head Alexander Vlascov said the patient had undergone resuscitation measures but she did not respond.

‘As a result, the resuscitation doctor established biological death, ascertained it,’ he added. ‘The anesthetist is very worried. She feels very bad and we are afraid for her.

“’Every person makes mistakes. What will happen next to the career of this anesthetist is still a question,” he maintained.