#Angelica #cheated #death #Feels #euphoric #happiness
Squeak of training shoes, slamming floorball sticks, coffee and buns in the stands. Bullish forehead bones that push hearts and lungs to the breaking point.
It is a series game for Team Kalix IBK, which hopes to qualify for the Allsvenskan.
But something is wrong on this matchday, January 31, 2015.
16-year-old hillbilly Angelica Öberg is missing on the field. She can’t bear to go there, even to sit on the bench.
– I thought I had a cold. Was going to go down to Grandma’s, but had to stop in the laundry room because I was so out of breath.
Angelica Öberg collects the pictures from the illness in a box. At least she weighs just under 40 kilos. “I was so small and weak,” she says. Photo: Erik Simander
Father Christer Öberg, himself in the sports hall, answers the friends’ questions: Where is Angelica?
Worry hits you in the stomach.
– You know what? There is something wrong with you, it has never happened that you missed a match, says Christer to his daughter after the home team’s victory.
From the villa in Kalix where Angelica lives with her mother, father and little brother, the trip goes to the emergency room at Kalix hospital. Then on to Sunderby Hospital in Luleå.
– I turned 17 there, we celebrated my birthday in the children’s ward.
A winter month of inconsolable attempts with antibiotics, followed by new hospital stays.
The disease is granulomatous polyangitis makes itself felt amid Angelica’s teenage sense of immortality. The toddler years in the stable have changed into an existence where the evenings are spent in the sports hall.
– We were passionate about floorball, that’s where I found my friends.
Almost six months after the missed match, Angelica is terminally ill. While her teammates fight for advancement, her battle is fought in her own body.
Even in dark moments, Angelica Öberg wants to have full control of her prospects. “I have set intermediate goals, for a while the goal was to be able to eat,” she says. Photo: Erik Simander
She is coughing up blood, her lungs are sore.
– The disease was more aggressive than it usually is, and it only hit the lungs.
Angelica is being cared for at Umeå University Hospital.
The blood is centrifuged in a machine where the plasma, with the antibody that damages the blood vessels, is exchanged for donated plasma. At the same time, treatment with chemotherapy is started.
Nothing helps.
– I had to go home between treatments, but every time I came back the values had risen again.
Fact. Affects ten in a million
Granulomatous polyangiitis affects small blood vessels, mainly in the upper and lower respiratory tract and kidneys. Other organs can also be affected, for example skin, gastrointestinal tract, joints, eyes and heart. The patient’s own immune system attacks the blood vessels. About ten per million inhabitants are affected by the disease. It can occur at any age, as often in women as in men.
Source: Internet medicine
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As the internal wounds heal, scar tissue forms and Angelica’s lungs burst. Air she breathes leaks under her skin.
– I blew myself up like a Michelin man. One day when I was at home, I tried to eat a hot dog and felt: “no, I can’t eat, can’t breathe, can’t get air”.
Mom, dad and little brother standing gathered around the bed in the intensive care unit. The family is sitting in a car on the way there.
Angelica may not survive the night.
– I was aware that they were with me when the doctor said that I had to be sedated. He said: “you can’t take it anymore”.
She braces against.
– How can I fight to live if I sleep? I demanded that the doctor promise to wake me up. He couldn’t promise that, but in the end he promised to try.
Angelica Öberg wants to be awake in order to continue the fight for her life. Photo: Erik Simander
The chemical sleep lasts for several days. Angelica dreams of a girl who surfs in Australia and meets a guy on a beach.
– The story in a book my mother read to me when I was put to sleep.
When Angelica wakes up she has been moved to Solna in Stockholm county.
– I had as little air in my lungs as a newborn baby.
Next to the bed in the room at Karolinska University Hospital are a few chairs for visitors. On the wall hangs a photo collage from the friends in Kalix.
Angelica’s blood is oxygenated outside the body in a heart-lung machine, so-called ecmo. The aim is for the lungs to reach recovery.
Peangers, small clamping tools, hold the many hoses.
A life window opens in the open, after a month at Karolinska. With a wheelchair and oxygen, Angelica can be at home again.
The lungs have scratched a bit, but life is strained through an hourglass. The phone burns in his hand, the hope of a call before it’s too late.
Angelica is on the transplant waiting list.
– My pulmonologist said I had two years left. But I already knew, because I had calculated myself.
– I was very sad at first. But then I looked in the mirror and just decided to make the best of what was left. As a person, I have always been like that, that I want to know the situation and look for solutions.
“Working,” Angelica Öberg tries to write on a note after the first transplant, when she oscillates between sleep and wakefulness. Photo: Erik Simander
When the friends reach Allsvenskan Angelica and her father travel with the team. She’s bad there but bald.
– Once we lived where there was no lift, then the girls wanted to carry me. I could participate in everything because I have my friends and relatives, she says.
The coordinator at Sahlgrenska University Hospital is fully occupied with the logistics surrounding his patient. If matching lungs are found, Angelica must be quickly flown to Gothenburg, but from which airport?
– I called there all the time because I was on the road.
Late one evening comes the call:
“Hey, we’ve found two lungs that we think might fit you.”
Angelica has been waiting for a year and a half. Now there will be an ambulance flight to Gothenburg.
– There were no complications, the operation went well.
Angelica Öberg has the scar over her chest after the first transplant, and the scar in her throat comes from respiratory care. Photo: Erik Simander
Men de nya the lungs do not start coughing.
Days on a respirator turn into weeks.
– The kidneys started to fail, there was nothing more they could do.
As the equally difficult and irreversible decision creeps closer, life suddenly stirs in Angelica’s chest.
A month and a half after the operation.
Gradually, Angelica regains control abilities of his body. Practices lifting arms, standing, walking, eating and breathing without worry.
A year after the transplant, she is back.
Angelica graduates, works as a purchasing assistant, is active in the floorball club and begins studying to become a nurse. She meets love Jonas Renfors, has two bonus children and moves into a house in Unbyn outside Boden.
Monday afternoon with bonus children Agnes and Stina Renfors. “Everyday life is what you long for most when you’re sick,” says Angelica Öberg. Photo: Erik Simander
Then Angelica’s body rejects the new lungs.
She is dying again.
– I was lying on the couch with my partner and thought that if I fall asleep in here, I’ll die happy anyway.
February 2022another phone call.
When Angelica wakes up after transplant number two, she at first thinks she’s been asleep for a year. A nasty feeling of having lost precious time.
But in fact, she comes out of anesthesia ahead of schedule.
– My God, I’m getting air and it’s easy. The very next day I was walking with a walking table in the ward.
The first conversations are dizzying.
– It was the same surgeon as the first time, he asked how I felt. I replied “half run over but otherwise it’s good” and he just “yeah!”.
Sunderby Hospital in Luleå is Angelica’s home field.
– Well you, when we’re here anyway. I need to get some prescriptions renewed, she says.
The man in the office chair opposite has white clothes and friendly eyes. Dirk Albrecht, senior physician in pulmonary medicine. A recurring name when Angelica tells her story.
Her compass in the healthcare labyrinth.
– He sees the whole person, not only the medical aspect but also what is good for the soul and the joy of life, and he is easy-going.
Dirk screws up, almost prematurely.
Angelica Öberg visits her pulmonologist Dirk Albrecht at Sunderby Hospital. Soon she will be a nurse. “I know how it feels to be seriously ill. It helps me understand patients in similar situations”. Photo: Erik Simander
He is the doctor who stuck with lungs, chronic ailments and patient contacts that, at best, run over time.
The first time he meets Angelica, she is 16 years old. When she is transferred to adult healthcare, the relationship develops.
Dirk has delivered several difficult messages.
– The odds were not so good. When she was at her worst, I hadn’t bet very much on it going this well. Not of my own money, actually, but of course a lot of my professional energy.
They talk about Angelica getting a dog, about her walking two miles in the forest and about her becoming a nurse in the summer.
“There is a driving force, a healthy core that is needed to dare to go home despite not feeling well, to get started and pull yourself out of the deep pit,” says Dirk Albrecht. Photo: Erik Simander
Dirk will meet her as a colleague at the hospital.
– She has a unique perspective to contribute to care, having seen it from the other side, he says.
How does it feel to meet Angelica now?
– It helps me take the difficult patients, where things are not going so well. With Angelica we get to enjoy the moments of joy, there will be worse days again, says Dirk.
The puppy Kenta gets mange when Angelica whistles the empty shell from a rifle shot. The howl means candy, Kenta, who is trained for deer hunting, knows that.
Angelica has just graduated as a hunter.
– I can start to laugh because I am so happy with my life. It’s not just happiness, but truly euphoric happiness.
Angelica Öberg tells her doctor about the puppy Kenta and that she has been able to walk two miles in the forest. Photo: Erik Simander
The idea of getting really old doesn’t exist with Angelica, who recently received her annual orange pension envelope in the mailbox.
– Then I said to my partner, can’t you withdraw that money now?
– I am more worried about not living, i.e. not doing things, than ceasing to exist.
She talks carefree about death.
– It’s probably a little bit of a protection mechanism. I expect a short time but hope it will be long. Then it won’t be something that is taken away from me, but more of a bonus to be able to live.
Angelica plans for one year at a time, but has goals and dreams that extend beyond that.
– Next summer I’m getting married.
Read more: A record number of people got new lungs last year
