Posted on 03/19/2005 6:36:26 PM PST by TASMANIANRED
I have the consent of Salamander to post this.
In the interest of clarity for those undecided about Terri's quality of life and her potential for recovery, I post Salamanders story. A fascinating take on the nature of brain injury and its effects on consciousness.
I have no frontal lobe. It was destroyed in an accident in 1981. All that's filling up the space is scar tissue and spinal fluid. Apparently I'm still functioning and "thinking" to some extent. I won't bore you with the details of the damage I also sustained in my temporal and parietal lobes and cerebellum.
Suffice it to say that I was declared "hopeless" by the doctors in the hospital and that *if* I ever awoke, I'd be a "vegetable" for life. They told my parents that injuries *much* less severe than my own usually killed people, outright.
After an 11 day hospital "death watch", I simply awoke and asked for a cheeseburger. There was no gradual "improvement" in health. I just woke up and that was it. [I had my cheeseburger and walked out of the hospital that same day and went out to dinner and dancing, that night] Miracle? Probably. With the exception of anosmia and a balance problem [inner ear bones damaged too], I was "fine". I have to work a little harder to recall things due to short-term memory problems and my fine motor control isn't as fine as it used to be, but and I *am* "functioning and thinking to some extent".
I hope you understand now why I am so disgusted by people who say that "this part or the other of her brain is missing and therefore there is no hope". I am lacking major parts which are supposedly "vital" to consciousness and "self" yet here am I, lucid and functioning superbly.
My point is, there is always -hope- and science doesn't even begin to understand how the brain can "reroute circuitry" to compensate for damaged areas.
Having nearly been like Terri, myself, I have a vested interest in her welfare.
She deserves an attempt at rehabilitation. She deserves physical and mental stimulation. The brain will "atrophy" when deprived of such things and my doctors have flat-out told me that my own efforts to "exercise" my mind, post-injury are responsible for the fact that I am "firing on [almost] all cylinders", today.
I ~could~ have "been her" and she could yet have a chance to "be me"....or at least greatly improved, if only her adoring spouse would allow her that chance.
I like your sense of humor...maybe you should team up with Kate Adamson and write a book about your experience.
Salamander, you have a rye wit.
I'm awfully glad to have met you.
You laugh in the face of adversity, you tell the Docs to screw themselves and just get on with life.
Thanks, No one should die because of the prejudice of a physician or a judge.
I'm sorry, I was tired also when I posted. At the time, implied ridicule of the quantity of Terri's threads and posters by some of the early posters on this thread just really bothered me. But I did not have the energy for a flame. I should have had the comment taken down by the Mod.
Other than that, thank you for your story. I'll bet that cheeseburger tasted good!
That lady's story makes mine look like a trip to Disney Land!
My experience positively pales beside what she went through.
[She'd give Edgar Allen Poe nightmares!]
Really, I'd feel unworthy to even stand in her shadow.
"Salamander, you have a rye wit."
I dunno...some might consider me too corny....;)
[moving right along with the "vegetable theme]
Sometimes things get so "serious" that you have to laugh because there's nothing else left to do.
I left the hospital with a laundry list of dire warnings and symptoms to be on the alert for.
It was ridiculous.
No one could sit and remember all that stuff.
The only "rule" I observed was the "no jumping" one.
[there was a 3/4 inch wide crack in the back of of my skull and too much jarring could've made it worse...I dunno...maybe my brains would've leaked out or something]....:))
I did have mild "absence seizures" for about a year and a half but since I "wasn't there" while I had them, they didn't bother me a'tall....;)
Once the swelling went away and things healed, the "seizures" just tapered off to nothing.
I've often had to adapt to my brain's "new" ways of doing things and make allowances for the things that it doesn't do as particularly fast or efficiently as before but I feel blessed and fortunate that what is "me" is still here and kicking.
I glad to have met you, too.
I only wish it had been under happier circumstances.
[here's hoping that "the circumstances" gets to live]...;)
I try to give them the benefit of the doubt.
When a subject grieves people to the point of being psychologically unbearable, they often react with contradictory "anger".
[and yes, at that point, even a hospital "mystery meat" cheeseburger tasted divine!]...LOL!
You've got more patience than I have if you could listen to the bilge and filth over there.
I wonder how the lady you mentioned felt knowing that a great number of her compatriots would be in favor of her being euthanized.
If you are going to err, err on the side of life.
Death is permanent.
She has just over 100 posts because she sticks to the posts that have anything to do with disabilities. Since I got booted from DU and can only "lurk" when I can stand it, I have looked for what she's saying. Nearly to a person all the disabled are furious at the abled DU'ers because they know the abled would snuff them in a minute if given the opportunity (and by that I mean vote to get rid of them, not kill them themselves.) The disabled think that conservatives will not provide for them - they use Bush's budget this year he submitted with the Medicaid cuts as proof. Still they feel that at least conservatives care whether they live or die.
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