Posted on 09/11/2006 8:17:41 PM PDT by aculeus
We have always been told there is no recovery from persistent vegetative state - doctors can only make a sufferer's last days as painless as possible. But is that really the truth? Across three continents, severely brain-damaged patients are awake and talking after taking ... a sleeping pill. And no one is more baffled than the GP who made the breakthrough. Steve Boggan witnesses these 'strange and wonderful' rebirths
For three years, Riaan Bolton has lain motionless, his eyes open but unseeing. After a devastating car crash doctors said he would never again see or speak or hear. Now his mother, Johanna, dissolves a pill in a little water on a teaspoon and forces it gently into his mouth. Within half an hour, as if a switch has been flicked in his brain, Riaan looks around his home in the South African town of Kimberley and says, "Hello." Shortly after his accident, Johanna had turned down the option of letting him die.
Three hundred miles away, Louis Viljoen, a young man who had once been cruelly described by a doctor as "a cabbage", greets me with a mischievous smile and a streetwise four-move handshake. Until he took the pill, he too was supposed to be in what doctors call a persistent vegetative state.
Across the Atlantic in the United States, George Melendez, who is also brain-damaged, has lain twitching and moaning as if in agony for years, causing his parents unbearable grief. He, too, is given this little tablet and again, it's as if a light comes on. His father asks him if he is, indeed, in pain. "No," George smiles, and his family burst into tears.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
ping
ping
What an amazing story. It makes one wonder whether a grand jury should be empaneled to indict the murderers of Terri Schiavo, based on this evidence -- including that black-robed thug Greer, and that freakish Felos.
Does this little pill have a name?
Oh, leave him alone.
You're as classy as ever...
I can only think about the Terri Schiavo case. The flowers in her room, which were allowed to have water, were also in a "vegetative state".
And you...as ridiculous as ever.
Only a true pro-death type could be so hateful in the midst of such a hopeful article.
Yes, those TERRIBLE people who follow the law, as written.
ITMT, this is great news -- it certainly has hope for people in the future and we should be upbeat.
If Schaivo taught us anything it is to make our wishes known in writing. Maybe people will specify to hang on if they think a vegetative state is recoverable.
What I have read here is truly amazing! Including the commentary.
We'll see.
If something sounds too good to be true?
Just be cautious.
I'd love to take this and run with it for obvious reasons that still depress me....but I'd rather not be like the embryonic stem cell advocates that latched onto the miracle breakthrough that turned out to be a sham a few weeks ago.
Why don't we just freeze everyone's bodies until we can come up with a way to keep them all alive FOREVER?????
Ambien:
Perhaps the last word should go to Pat Flores, the mother of George Melendez, the 31-year-old coma patient who reassured his parents that he wasn't in pain after taking Ambien, as zolpidem is known in the US. He was starved of oxygen when his car overturned and he landed face down in a garden pond near his home in Houston, Texas, in 1998. "The doctors said he was clinically dead - one said he was a vegetable," says Pat. "After three weeks he suffered multi-organ failure and they said his body would ultimately succumb. They said he would never regain consciousness."He survived and four years later, while visiting a clinic, Pat gave him a sleeping pill because his constant moaning was keeping her and her husband, Del, awake in their shared hotel room. "After 10 to 15 minutes I noticed there was no sound and I looked over," she recalls. "Instead of finding him asleep, there he was, wide awake, looking at his surroundings. I said, 'George', and he said, 'What?' We sat up for two hours asking him questions and he answered all of them. His improvements have continued and we talk every day. He has a terrific sense of humour and he carries on running jokes from the day before.
Very interesting stuff if one reads the entire article.
You have a problem with healing all sick people or just all sick people who don't go by the name of Hildy?
Why don't we give you a pillow and let you stroll through hospitals and rest homes and smother the helpless and feeble you judge unworthy of life?
Ambien, Patrick Kennedy, Vegetative State.
I want to know who is going to pay to keep all these bodies alive.
I want to know who is going to pay to keep all these bodies alive???
That's not what I asked you but while we are on the topic, who pay's to keep you alive? :-}
There it is, the price tag.
People in a coma are not subhuman; they are asleep.
It shouldnt be called PVS - vegetative is an insult, these are humans, not cabbages - so call it what it is,
PUS - Persistent Unconscious State.
It's wonderful that we are able to wake some of them up.
I wonder if.....ping.
"There it is, the price tag."
Ya know, Ambien is soooo expensive (/sarc)
What kind of ridiculous question is that? If you don't want to answer my question, fine. But as a Society, we'd better ask ourselves that question: If everyone is to be kept alive, by any means possible, WHO IS GOING TO PAY FOR IT?
Very articulate...bravo!
Oh and BTW, try this on for size Ms Compassion:
"One specialist said he had a 5% chance of recovering, another said he had no chance whatsoever of regaining consciousness," says his mother, Johanna. She and her husband, Tinus, spend about £1,000 a month on round-the-clock care for their son in a converted garage at their home, but until June they had seen no sign of awareness in him. Then they asked their doctor, Clive Holroyd, to contact Nel for advice."
YES...the price tag. WHO IS GOING TO PAY? That is a valid question and one, as a Society, we have to face.
an article on this case from July - http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/OnCall/story?id=2154940&page=1
"He can respond to his parents by either shaking his head yes or no and sometimes even speaks."
Somewhat different from a two hour running conversation ...
We just should send everybody off to "Carousel" when they hit 30 and be done with it.
[p.s...Soylent Green is people!!!!]
Amazing.....
I get NO subidies from the government..thank you. But I did see how much Medicare spent on my parents at the end of their lives, and it was astrononical. SO, if you want everyone to be kept alive, no matter what the cost, tell us now, here, that you are willing to fork over 80% of your salary for that to happen.... or else ... STFU.
If you're volunteering, I'm not complaining! If you're not volunteering, I'm still not complaining.
Have a nice day ;0
I get the feeling that certain people are going to be very upset at this news.
Have you seen this one?
Not everyone is pleased with this hopeful news, however. The Kevorkian vultures among us to are filled with anger, misery, and despair because of it.
LOL, you are one nasty Broomhildy. Sorry about your parents though.
Comatose patients are still there, it's a matter of turning on the right switch.
ping for tomorrow
Honestly, why am I nasty? Because I'm a realist? Because I believe there are things WORSE than death? Because I believe the soul goes one beyond the confines of a body that doesn't work? Does that make me nasty? I just don't understand.
And they will continue to deny, deny, deny.
Leda, actually click through the link and read the article. Then I have a question.
What I wonder is if it will help less severely brain injured people recover lost faculties, such as short-term memory or anosmia, among other residual effects.
Thanks I just did.
Curiosity got me to do it.
Gonna ask to try it for my son who has alot of uncontrollable movement from his brain damage.
Can't hurt.
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