Free Republic

According to a study by the Coma Science Group of the University of Liège, Belgium, up to half the patients in an acute vegetative state regain some level of consciousness. Results of the study are also consistent with previous studies showing that at least 40% of patients deemed to be in a persistent vegetative state are misdiagnosed. “The study showed how very hard it is to disentangle the minimally conscious state from the vegetative state,” says Dr. Steven Laureys. And in cases that health workers diagnosed as minimally conscious, 10% were actually communicating functionally. Comparing past studies on this...

A woman who has been in a coma-like state for more than six years awoke for three days this week to talk with family members and eat her favorite foods before relapsing. “She was smiling and grinning and told my staff she wanted to go to a club, even doing a little chair dance in her wheelchair,” said one of her doctors, Randall Bjork. The woman, Christa Lilly, 49, suffered a cardiac arrest in November 2000. Since then, her mother, Minnie Smith, has been caring for her at home. Ms. Smith said Ms. Lilly had awakened five times, sometimes for...

A severely brain-damaged woman in an unresponsive, vegetative state showed clear signs on brain imaging tests that she was aware of herself and her surroundings, researchers are reporting today, in a finding that could have far-reaching consequences for how unconscious patients are cared for and how their conditions are diagnosed. In response to commands, the patient’s brain flared with activity, lighting the same language and movement-planning regions that are active when healthy people hear the commands. Previous studies had found similar activity in partly conscious patients, who occasionally respond to commands, but never before in someone who was totally unresponsive....

LifeNews.com Note: David Reardon is the director of the Illinois-based Elliot Institute.The odds of recovery from brain injuries and vegetative states may be dramatically improved simply by restoring normal brain temperatures, according to a new medical theory published in the August issue of Medical Science Monitor.The study was inspired by the case of 53-year-old woman who suffered a heart attack and oxygen deprivation of the brain. In the course of a few days she slipped from consciousness to coma and then to a vegetative state. For the following thirty-one months she was receiving oxygen through a tube in her trachea.But...

Many of you replied when I originally posted my husband's horrible hospital odyssey of several months ago. Things were going okay in the Catholic hospital, until my husband knocked out his trach in his sleep. The alarm didn't go off. My husband can breathe on his own, and the ventilator was giving him some small support. His heart stopped. They resuscitated him, and he's been in a twilight since. The dr. he has has given up on him - this has only been a week. My husband IS starting to respond and focus, but the dr. doesn't care. He's pressuring...

Can Ambien Wake Up PVS Patients? The Guardian gives credence to a case report concerning three patients purportedly diagnosed in PVS for more than three years who were "aroused transiently every morning after zolpidem," a sleeping pill. That would be Ambien. The report, by Clauss and Nel, of Royal Surrey County Hospital and of Family Practice of Pollack Park South Africa, was published in this month's issue of Neurorehabilitation. There are 26 million annual prescriptions for Ambien, most of which are probably not to patients in a persistent vegetative state. Recall that Ambien is oft reported to cause odd behavior...

Close window Published online: 23 May 2006; | doi:10.1038/news060522-9 Sleeping pills offer wake-up call to vegetative patients Drug could overcome brain shutdown caused by trauma.Michael Hopkin Clinical researchers have discovered that they can rouse semi-comatose patients by giving them, bizarrely, a common sleeping drug. If more wide-ranging tests are successful, the drug could become the first effective treatment for 'persistent vegetative state', the condition at the centre of the US legal battle over sufferer Terri Schiavo last year. British and South African doctors have reported the cases of three semi-comatose patients who were revived for several hours at a...

WESTFIELD, Mass. -- Allison Avrett's photos show her daughter Haleigh as a smiling little girl with brown bangs hanging over her squinting eyes. Those pictures were taken before Mrs. Avrett gave up Haleigh for adoption five years ago, and long before the purported beating that landed the 11-year-old in a hospital attached to the ventilator and feeding tube. Now, with Haleigh's doctors saying she will never recover from her vegetative state, the child is at the center of a life-and-death legal struggle.

http://www.aish.com/spirituality/odysseys/Carrots_Dont_Cry.asp Carrots Don't Cry by Rachel Ginsberg Doctors said that Marsi Tabak would remain in a persistent vegetative state for the rest of her life. With tireless dedication and a warehouse of faith, her husband proved them wrong. "True redemption is the freedom from preconceived notions and breaking out of the bonds of hopelessness, knowing that the Almighty is with you and making miracles for you all the time," says Dr. Yacov Tabak. He should know. Seven years ago his wife, Marsi, suffered prolonged oxygen deprivation after a heart attack and was given a grim diagnosis: persistent vegetative state (PVS)....

In what family members are calling a miracle, a Buffalo firefighter is talking again after nearly a decade in a brain-damaged state. Donald Herbert suffered severe injuries when a roof collapsed on him while he was fighting a fire in December 1995. The injury left him brain damaged and unable to speak.

Defense of adulterer Michael Schiavo's thirteenth public attempt to murder his invalid wife (with the aid and abetment of the Florida courts) only manifests that America’s conscience is in a Persistent Vegetative State. Depriving a cat of food and water for a week would see Schiavo in an orange jumpsuit by nightfall---with the torches and pitchforks of PAWS, PETA and Greenpeace at his jugular. Merely human, Terri has no such rescuer; tortured to death in Florida as the 300 million of us sit and watch. Not one man can be found in America. Had she, like Charles Manson, been imprisoned...

Judge George Greer ruled that the State of Florida has no right to take custody of Terri Schiavo, which ruling came hours after an appeal by Terri's parents to re-insert the feeding tube was refused by the U.S. Supreme Court. Meanwhile, another hearing was scheduled tonight before US District Judge James D. Whittemore .. the same judge who previously heard and denied the request subsequent to the 'de novo' intention of the law past last weekend by the Congress and signed by President Bush, in an effort to confirm that no stone was left unturned before Terri would endure legally...

STARVATION: DAY 8 Jeb Bush not likely to ride to rescue Florida governor indicates he won't defy court order Posted: March 25, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com Those hoping Florida Gov. Jeb Bush will step forward to save Terri Schiavo from imminent, court-ordered starvation death are likely to be disappointed, based on his comments to a group of reporters following county court Judge George Greer's ruling against the state's effort to take custody of the brain-injured woman at the center of a worldwide euthanasia controversy. While Bush reiterated his motivation to save Schiavo, based on new evidence that...

Please find below an important message from Terri Shiavo's father, Bob Schindler Sr. They have some important information to share with you regarding new attempts to starve his disabled daughter to death. Please take action right away on this important issue.Thank you.NewsMax.com   Help Save My Daughter From Starvation! (from Terri Schiavo's father) Dear Friend of Life,By now you have probably heard about a young woman who is threatened with starvation in Florida.That young woman is my daughter, Terri. In 1990, through circumstances which are shrouded in mystery (and may involve a criminal act by Terri's estranged husband), my...

Per foxnews alert!

On Oct. 27, 2003, Michael Schiavo, the husband of the cognitively disabled Florida woman, Terri Schindler-Schiavo, appeared on Larry King Live to explain why he was fighting so hard to remove his wife’s feeding tube. His appearance was only days after the Florida legislature intervened to have Terri’s feeding tube reinserted for the second time in two years. Michael Schiavo insisted that he wanted to help his wife “die with dignity.” He told King: “It’s painless, and probably the most natural way to die. It is a very easy way to die — probably the second best way to die,...

Mark Kegans for The New York TimesTHEY'RE QUIRKY, AND THEY VOTE A dome in Fairfield, Iowa, where residents meditate. They overwhelmingly support Dennis Kucinich, who leads Democrats there. AIRFIELD, IowaIn this little pocket of Iowa, houses are built to face the rising sun, something called yogic flying is a popular pastime and Dennis J. Kucinich is a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.Even as much of the country still struggles to pronounce his name (it's koo-SIN-itch), Mr. Kucinich has become a phenomenon in Fairfield, population 9,500. His proposals to promote world peace, universal health care and environmental sustainability...

<p>Daughter's recovery after six months adds layer to debate over sustaining a patient's life. To look into your daughter's vacant eyes. To hold her indifferent hand. To wonder if she knows when you leave the room. For six months, Debbie Lord tried to raise her daughter Evelyn from what doctors described as a persistent vegetative state. Some of those doctors said Evelyn would never recover. They encouraged Lord to let the girl die.</p>

Oct. 27--No one wants to make life-or-death decisions. Not for themselves. Not for a loved one. Terri Schiavo, like nearly all young people, had no written directives for her health care or end-of-life choices in 1990 when she had a heart attack and subsequent brain injury at age 26. Now her family, the courts, the Florida Legislature and, through media coverage, much of the nation are embroiled in a debate over whether she should be sustained on a feeding tube and who should decide.Her case prompts many to look at such critical decisions. Some people make their ethical choices in...