When 16-year-old Edwarda O’Bara came down with the flu at Christmas, she had no idea it would be the last conscious moments she would cherish with her family.
The loving teen lived a completely normal life – she loved ponies, was inseperable from her younger and mischievous sister Colleen, who was just 18 months her junior, and she did well at school.
But when a common illness struck during the festive holidays, she slipped into a coma she would never wake up from. Edwarda’s family prayed for a miracle for 42 agonising years, giving up their lives to tend to her every need. But tragically, it never came.
Experts believe Edwarda’s comatosed state was the longest ever recorded. Her parents continued to fight until their final breaths, desperately hoping to fulfil their little girl’s last wish.
The youngster, from Miami Florida, had been diagnosed with diabetes in late 1969 and prescribed an oral insulin medication that was later banned due to its dangerous side effects. When she fell ill with flu, the teen started throwing up the medication which meant sugar gathered in her system.
Her family described her as waking up “shaking and in great pain”, with horrified dad Joe returning from a fishing trip to find his daughter in her room with “sugar lumps” under the skin. “My sister was screaming,” said Edwarda’s sibling Colleen, according to The Sun. “I remember it like it was yesterday. My dad started rubbing her legs to try to get the sugar to flow. He picked her up, and we just rushed her to the hospital.”
The family took the poorly teen to hospital at 2am on January 3, 1970, and before she fell unconscious, she asked her mum to “promise you won’t leave me”. “Of course not, I would never leave you darling,” responded her tearful mum Kaye. Edwarda’s lungs collapsed, her kidneys failed and heart faltered, causing a lack of oxygen to her brain and she never came out of her coma.
The teenager’s doting parent kept to her word – Kaye didn’t leave her daughter’s side, foregoing sleep to turn her every two hours to prevent bedsores and feed her through a tube. Kaye died in March 2008, aged 80, an estimated £160,000 in debt due to her daughter’s medical bills.
Joe had died in 1977 of a heart attack after working three jobs to pay Edwarda’s medical fees, and after the loss of her mum, Colleen quit her job to become a full-time carer. “I didn’t give it a second thought,” she said. “She’s my sister. And I love her.”
Edwarda, who became known as the ‘real-life Snow White’, attracted celebrity visits and thousands of people flew to her home to celebrate her 56th birthday after Collen sent out 4,000 invites. But the high-profile nature of her plight attracted sinister attention too. American right-to-die group the Hemlock Society spent time pleading with Kaye to let Edwarda die. One phone call on December 26, 1981, threatened to put the unconscious woman out of her misery and a few hours later, bullets were fired into the family home. Edwarda was not hurt during the ordeal.
She lived until the age of 59, when she died at home on November 21, 2012. Her sister Colleen was there by her side. After bathing Edwarda, Colleen had lovingly fixed her hair and fed her through her feeding tube like she had done countless times before, but it turned out to be their final morning together.
She went to make a cup of coffee after bending down to kiss her sister, telling her she’d be back in just a minute. “She gave me the biggest smile she has ever given me in her life,” Colleen told CNN. “Her face was aglow. There was a sparkle in her eyes.” But then Edwarda closed her eyes for the final time. She was buried alongside her mother and father, who selflessly cared for her.
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