Freak Brain Injury Makes New Bride Forget Wedding a Month Later; Husband Engineers Recovery

A Queens couple celebrated a unique wedding anniversary in a Long Island hospital Tuesday, insisting their love helped conquer a near fatal brain hemorrhage.

Tunicia and Raleigh Hall were married in June. A month later, complaining of the worst headache in her life, Tunicia Hall, 43, was taken to the hospital.

She was suffering from what doctors call an "uncommon" type of brain hemorrhage, a form of a stroke that strikes otherwise healthy middle-aged people.

As doctors treated his wife, Raleigh Hall, 50, realized she was losing some of her memory.

At one point, she asked the man she has known for 30 years, "Are we married?”

“I felt like I lost her,” Raleigh Hall remembered.

He covered the walls of his wife’s hospital room with photos of their wedding, in the hope that it would help her remember.

“I was fighting to get her back. Whatever came to mind, I tried," Raleigh Hall said.

Over time, the couple said, Tunicia Hall began to remember.

"The photos drew questions -- when were we married? And she saw something and I believe what she saw was hope," Raleigh Hall said.

Tunicia Hall said the process of recovering her memory was gradual, but she now feels "great" and is in no pain.

The couple marked three months as man and wife at North Shore University hospital in Manhasset, a few floors below the intensive care unit where Raleigh Hall spent weeks at his wife’s bedside.

Hospital staff presented the happy couple with a cake and then offered a toast "to life."

Tunicia Hall's doctor acknowledged that sometimes medical science alone isn’t enough to bring patients back.

“This is a great example of that,” said Dr. Richard Temis. “Patients families are key to recovery.”

"It happens," said Raleigh Hall. "When you see hope, it happens." 

Follow Greg Cergol on Twitter @GREGCERGOL4NY

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