coma

THERE are fears for a Thai princess after the royal palace shared a concerning health update following her three-year-long coma battle.

Princess Bajrakitiyabha Mahidol, the eldest daughter of King Vajiralongkorn, is said to have developed a severe infection.

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The 46-year-old, affectionately known as Princess Bha, collapsed in December, 2022, while training her dogs in Nakhon Ratchasima, northeast of Bangkok.

She has been in a coma ever since.

The Bureau of the Royal Household gave the first update on her condition in more than two years on Friday, saying she had suffered a “severe” blood infection.

The palace said in a following update that a team of doctors were closely monitoring her situation.

It read: “The medical team said that she remains in a state of low blood pressure, requiring continuous treatment.

“Doctors are administering medication to stabilise her blood pressure, along with medical equipment and antibiotics to support kidney function and breathing.”

Over the years, some reports have suggested her health condition is far more serious than the palace is letting on.

Princess Bajrakitiyabha was training her dogs at a working dog championship organised by the Thaiarmy when she collapsed.

Paramedics rushed her to a nearby hospital before a helicopter took her to Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn health facility.

Bajrakitiyabha is the daughter of the king’s first wife, Princess Soamsawali.

She has been part of her father’s inner circle since he came to the throne in 2016 and is a senior officer in the king’s personal guard.

The fitness enthusiast is widely viewed as the most suitable successor for her father, who turned 70 this year.

She has post-graduate law degrees from two US universities and has long called for prison reforms in Thailand.

She was also the Thai ambassador to Austria between 2012 and 2014.

The 73-year-old king, who has seven children from four marriages, has not announced his chosen heir.

Though succession rules in Thailand favour men.

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Mexican actor Manuel Masalva is on the road to recovery after contracting an aggressive bacterial infection in March that left him in a medically induced coma for weeks.

In his first social media post since the onset of his illness, the “Narcos: Mexico” actor updated his followers on his current health status via Instagram on Monday evening.

“I am healing. I want to profoundly thank you all for the support you have given me and continue to give me, in every sense, every one of you,” Masalva wrote. “This [process] has barely begun, there is much more left to go, but I feel blessed, strong, reborn and well-accompanied. … God has given me a new life.”

Masalva first felt the onset of an ailment when he arrived in Dubai in March, following a trip to the Philippines, revealing that he ended up spending 105 days in the Dubai hospital that first treated him for his prolonged illness.

The actor first arrived in the Middle East city on March 18, his manager Jaime Jaramillo Espinosa told The Times in April.

“[After] about two days in Dubai, Masalva began to feel internal discomfort and pain which increased by the day,” Jaramillo Espinosa said.

On March 26, Masalva underwent emergency surgery after doctors discovered the bacterial infection, which prevented him from traveling back to his home in Mexico. The following day, the infection reached his lungs and he had to be put into a medically induced coma.

Masalva thanked the Dubai hospital staff for their work and for the distinct culture that “overflowed with love and spirituality.”

“I don’t know if I really understand all of what’s going on or just a part of it, it’s been an eternity and there are still some parts missing, I just want to the strongest thanks that I can give to God, my family, my doctors and all those people that have supported me since the start of this process. I owe you all my life,” he wrote.

Masalva played the role of Ramón Arellano Félix in the Netflix drama series “Narcos: Mexico,” alongside Diego Luna, Bad Bunny and Scoot McNairy. He has also been featured on the telenovela “La Rosa de Guadalupe” and recently in the series “La Guzmán.”

LYING on the track in a tangled mess, Tai Woffinden admits the last thing he remembers is people crying at the extent of his injuries.

The five-times world champion blacked out minutes after the horror crash where he sustained over 15 BROKEN BONES following a high-speed pile-up in Krosno, Poland in late March. 

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Great Britain ace Woffy, 34, was given an emergency helicopter airlift to hospital as fears grew over his survival because of chest injuries and a huge loss of blood.

He was then put in a medically induced coma after three lengthy major operations. 

But two months after fighting for his life, Woffinden is now walking and eight weeks ahead in his gruelling recovery plan in rehab.

In his first interview since the incident, he reveals how he heard the femur bone in his leg snap on impact and that the first people on the scene were in tears on seeing his condition because his arms were “pointing in the wrong direction”. 

He admitted: “I remember everything. In the race that I crashed I made a pretty decent start, so I blipped the throttle a little bit coming into the corner.

“The junior rider off gate one drove over the kerb, ran into the guy that was off gate two, who then collected me.

“As I got collected, as you normally do, you drop it on the side and slide towards the fence. And then while sliding across the track, my bike hit the APD (airfence) first, which lifted it up probably about a metre.

“And the moment I saw that lift, I just went, ‘oh f***’. And then I hit the fence, I heard my femur snap.

“It’s almost like if you’re underwater and you snap a tree branch.

“I then was laid on the track. I remember looking up and seeing everybody around me. The team manager’s face looked like he had seen a ghost.

“One person was crying looking at my body. My arms were pointing all in the wrong direction. My left shoulder was dislocated, pointing upwards.

“My right humerus was shattered at the bottom. My elbow was dislocated and my elbow was broken.

“I actually couldn’t see my hands when I was laying on the track because they were both pointing up.

“So I’m sat there saying, ‘give me some meds’. I was saying ‘bol, bol, bol’ which means pain in Polish just to make sure they knew what I was talking about.

“I don’t know if I passed out from the amount of Fentanyl they’d given me or the amount of blood that I’d lost.”

Woffinden, Britain’s greatest-ever rider, had a double compound right femur fracture, broken back, right humerus compound fracture, dislocated and smashed right elbow, 12 broken ribs,punctured lung, left broken shoulder blade and dislocated left shoulder.

He added: “I remember the blades of the helicopter, the noise of it starting to take off. And then the next thing, I’m in a coma. 

“There were so many injuries, I probably wouldn’t have been able to be awake and deal with the injuries. One of the operations was 12 hours long and I had multiple blood transfusions.

“I thought a coma would have been a pleasant sleep. It was quite the opposite. It was the worst thing I’d ever experienced. It was quite scary at times. I was on sedatives and painkillers and antibiotics.

“I was hallucinating, I was dreaming and having nightmares. Normally you have a nightmare and you wake up. Well, I couldn’t wake up.

“I dealt with some wild s***. I woke up from the coma, and everything that I’d dreamt, I believed it was real. And my wife Faye was like, ‘mate, that didn’t happen’. I was getting angry with Faye because she wasn’t believing me.”

Woffinden refused to be drawn on what the future holds in speedway, his only focus is on full recovery from the huge toll of injuries. 

He added: “There’s so many variables. We need to give it that extra month to heal and then have the CT scan so we can really see what’s going on from all different angles.

“I might need another operation on my humerus in my arm because it was shattered in 27 places. If the metalwork hasn’t helped it knit together, I’ll need another op. 

“I’ve done everything I possibly can. I’ve done four to five hours a day in rehab since I left the hospital. My progress is on another level.

“It’s ridiculous. Where I’m at given the injuries is f*****g phenomenal.

“I would like to ride my bike again, whether that’s competitive or not or just practice, who knows?

“But I just make micro personal goals to keep reaching. Only my recovery comes first.”

Speaking to BBC Sport, consultant colorectal surgeon Professor Gillian Tierney said injuries similar to the one suffered by Awoniyi can be fatal.

“The injury is really serious. It is potentially life-threatening,” said Tierney.

“It is very easy to miss at the point of contact and can take hours to diagnose.

“In a hospital setting we would send a patient for a CT scan which could take up to 10 hours.

“If it occurred to an athlete who was super fit, very muscular and was running on adrenaline then I think it would be extremely understandable to miss it. Fluid leaking from the intestine would not be easy to diagnose straight away.

“Surgery is usually required and the stomach would be opened up. The mortality stat is 9%. So if an athlete – who went through the procedure – was really fit, they would stand a good chance of being OK.

“It would be different if the operation occurred for an 80-year-old, who has other health issues.”

Mr Harpaul Flora, consultant vascular and general surgeon at The London Clinic, said ruptured intestines are “a pretty rare injury”.

He added: “It’s either a compression of the abdominal wall which has led to tearing and liquid seeping out – or the tear of an artery.

“Neither of those would be able to be diagnosed without a scan, there may have been bruising.

“It can be life-threatening. If it wasn’t treated by a hospital it can give you an infection. It could then lead to sepsis, which is a life-threatening consequence.”