Posted on 11/23/2009 7:51:37 AM PST by mware
A car crash victim has spoken of the horror he endured for 23 years after he was misdiagnosed as being in a coma when he was conscious the whole time.
Rom Houben, trapped in his paralysed body after a car crash, described his real-life nightmare as he screamed to doctors that he could hear them - but could make no sound.
'I screamed, but there was nothing to hear,' said Mr Houben, now 46, who doctors thought was in a persistent vegatative state.
'I dreamed myself away,' he added, tapping his tale out with the aid of a computer.
Doctors used a range of coma tests before reluctantly concluding that his consciousness was 'extinct'.
But three years ago, new hi-tech scans showed his brain was still functioning almost completely normally.
Mr Houben described the moment as 'my second birth'. Therapy has since allowed him to tap out messages on a computer screen.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
backwards medical care coming to our country thanks to our federal govt.
There will be no incentive to move forward.
Death Panel says “Rats - one that got away”
“One” - Metallica
You know, that’s how I feel about Obama and health care reform. Millions are screaming to stop!, and it’s as if no one hears.
Wow....for a number of years, I had a series of nightmares where I was in a dangerous situation and found myself unable to scream out or fight back...they were terrifying. I can only begin to imagine what it must have been like to find one’s self in that situation for real.
If only they’d Schiavo’d him when they had a chance, we wouldn’t have to listen to him whine today.
This is an inconvenient truth for the culture of death crowd.
Good thing that “Doctor” on 60 minutes didn’t treat him!
I saw that movie! I was thinking the same thing.
A woman (Kathy Adamson) who was declared in a vegetative state. The doctors had removed her feeding tube and water. She was fully aware of what they were doing to her.
Nothing short of a miracle saved her. Using all her concentration, she began to occasionally blink her eye.
Her husband who was with her asked her if she could hear him, she managed to blink her eye. They established a system of blinks for communication.
Lorenzo’s Oil as well.
In her book, Kate’s Journey: Triumph Over Adversity, she relates her desperation to communicate. “When the feeding tube was turned off for eight days, I thought I was going insane,” she told viewers. “I was screaming out, ‘don’t you know I need to eat?’” It was only her lawyer husband’s threat of a lawsuit that persuaded the doctors to put the tube back in. At one point doctors operated on her without enough anaesthetic in the belief that she was a “vegetable”, her husband claims, and she felt the pain of the operation. ~ The O’Reilly Factor, Nov 5; www.katesjourney.com
I saw that movie in college. He did have some ability to move. And God bless his nurse.
I hear ya.
Unfortunately I only think it is going to get worse. Especially if that damn health care bill passes.
I first heard it on an oldtime radio network replay of a 40’s broadcast. I had no idea that radical antiwar propaganda was so prevalent way back then too!
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