Another step into the mystery. (Don Herbert Brain damaged Figherfighter awakens)

Buffalo News ^ | May 8, 2005 | HENRY L. DAVIS

[FairOpinion]

Donald Herbert's breakthrough after a decade in a nearly silent stupor offers more evidence that other patients with severe brain injuries, often written off as hopeless, might improve with treatment, medical experts said last week.

Over the last 10 years, he appeared to fluctuate between a vegetative and a minimally conscious state, said Dr. Jamil Ahmed, a rehabilitation specialist at Erie County Medical Center who has treated Herbert since 2002.

Herbert unexpectedly started conversing again April 30, his brain apparently stimulated by a new combination of drugs he started taking three months ago. Since then, he has become less active again.

An estimated 112,000 to 280,000 Americans live in a minimally conscious state, many of them receiving only custodial care in institutions. Experts say that the stories of remarkable recoveries from brain damage often can be traced to minimally conscious patients who were thought to be vegetative.

But an accurate diagnosis is difficult. There's no exact boundary between the vegetative and minimally conscious states. People disagree about what constitutes awareness, and physicians can't look inside their patients' minds to learn what they're thinking.

[Ercolino]

What a great story this is, especially in light of the recent tragedy of Ms. Schiavo's murder. Being a Niagara Falls/Buffalo native, I was especially glad to see that this miraculous recovery took place in one of Father Baker's institutions and it would be truly something if this miracle could be attributed to him!

WWW.OURLADYOFVICTORY.ORG

[Hildy]

So we should just keep everyone alive, indefinitely, although modern medice ... right now ... says they are untreatable? Correct?

[org.whodat]

Some people would rather toot their own horn, and are cause, than they would try to understand that there is no correlation between the two cases.

[FairOpinion]

Actually there were some questions raised, whether the CATSCAN all over the internet really belonged to Terri or not.

Don't you find it odd, that Michael Schiavo refused to allow taking of an MRI, PETSCAN, or even another CATSCAN, and also refused to allow neurologists to go and examine Terri? If he were telling the truth, the easiest way to prove it would have been to allow those tests.

[FairOpinion]

Terri's murder was COURT ORDERED. That is what outrages people. The US court ordered the killing -- via a brutal, barbaric, torturous method -- of a US citizen, who is totally innocent and there was no doubt of her innocence. Murderers get more consideration, stray animals get more consideration, than Terri got.

Judge Greer specifically ordered her to be given no food or water by any means, not even by mouth.

[FairOpinion]

Terri's family and the nurses maintained all along that Terri responded to them, so Terri was NOT "just a body".

Also, I read that the fireman was actually in worse shape than Terri, he couldn't swallow his own salive, Terri could.

[FairOpinion]

"AND we will never be able to bring any of them back or learn anything from them to help others if we kill them off like animals."

Actually we treat them worse than animals. If there is someone who is willing to adopt a stray pet at an animal shelter, the shelter lets them have it. Terri's parents wanted to take care of her, and they weren't allowed, Terri was killed, despite having a loving family, who was willing to take care of her.

That's worse treatment, than that of a stray animal.

The court just showed that the life of a disabled person is not only worth less than that of a stray animal, but that it's good for society to kill of the disabled members. And this is civilization?

[Hildy]

There were tests..how do you think the lawsuit got settled without tests? Enough was enough..if he started letting people in...it would be never-ending. You know as well as I you can always get people to say something else if you pay them enough. IT WAS 15 YEARS.

[Guenevere]

#9..How do you know it's minimally?

And yes, they should be kept alive......

[FairOpinion]

13 years without therapy. When she was receiving therapy, she was improving.

The minute Michael got the money, he stopped the therapy, didn't even want to treat her infection. Don't you see anything wrong with this --- especially since he got most of the money specifically to provide Terri therapy and keep her comfortable the rest of her life, which was judged to be another 50 or so years, during the malpractice trial.

[jamaly]

I for one, don't understand the outrage about killing Terri. Millions of people are killed inside the womb, why complain if we kill them outside the womb? It's a double standard. Murder is murder, bottom line.

In case you haven't noticed, the pro-abortion people had no problem with killing Terri. However, we pro-lifers believe that unborn babies should not be murdered any more than Terri Schiavo should have been. Usually the biggest "double standard" only happens regarding the death penalty for CONVICTED CRIMINALS. Conservatives are generally pro-death penalty and liberals are in favor of letting murderers and rapists live to rape and kill again.

[KDD]

http://www.wsmv.com/Global/story.asp?S=3305923

One thing that does seem clear is that Herbert's case is entirely different from that of Terri Schiavo and that Shiavo was highly unlikely to have experienced this kind of awakening, had she lived, experts said.

Schiavo, a severely brain-damaged patient who died March 31 at 41 years of age, was the subject of an intense court battle between her parents, who wanted to keep her attached to life-sustaining nutrition, and her husband, who fought to have her feeding tube removed. The courts ultimately sided with Mr. Schiavo.

"There was a lot more damage in Shiavo," Nedd noted, adding that there's a point where the brain is so severely injured no interventions can be expected to help.

"Terry Shiavo was a completely different scenario because she was in a persistent vegetative state," Carver added. "This [Herbert] is a man who, as best as we know, had a greater degree of functioning in terms of his brain for the past 10 years. This is someone who was able to eat, able to say yes and no, someone who was able to sit and watch television, though he had some difficulty with vision. While he was obviously quite devastated from what happened to him, he was nonetheless neurologically functioning at a very different level from Terri Schiavo."

[Axenolith]

You have to pick your fields of battle and win the selected ones consistently to advance an overall agenda. The left has been doing it for years and kicking ass at it. The right trys to resist on all fronts equally and consistently loses ground because the all fronts fight always involves "compromise", consistently, from us.

[Dionysius]

This is God's way of showing us that what happened to Terri was cosmically wrong. (One of the many things I like about FR is that I can use the "G" word without being labelled a blithering idiot.)

[KDD]

The ability to use the "G' word still does not innoculate the user of said word from being a blithering idiot however.

Nor does it stop the delusional from proclaiming their knowledge of what constitutes God's will in the cosmos.

So many prophets and they only agree on one thing...and that is that there is little time left before judgement.

We must be sure to buy into the correct brand of salvation.

[Freedom Dignity n Honor]

Yes. Everyone who is not at the end of a terminal illness.

[GreenOgre]

If the CAT scan was indeed Terri's I don't see why an MRI or other test would be needed. All an MRI would do is clearly define the edges of the damage. The damage is massive. (I also don't look for my car keys after I find them.) Another reason there was no MRI or other scans is because there were some electrodes that were implanted to stimulate Terri's brain. The goal was to keep her gray matter from turning into goo. It didn't work. Those electrodes would cause a small lightning bolt (Like in a microwave oven) if she had been put in an MRI machine. Granted that would of been quicker than starvation, but I digress. At some time you have to say enough people have looked at the patient and come up with the same conclusion, and come to whatever conclusion you will come up with. They could of tested, prodded, pinched, poked Terri till the cows came home, but the CAT scan still said there was a huge chunk of her gray matter missing.

There is a very simple test to see if someone is aware of pain, just dig a knuckle into their breastbone and watch their reaction. I firmly believe if Terri could pass that simple test the Schindlers would of had those pictures all over the 5:00 news. Any EMT knows this trick. In the depths of all the information that was made public why wasn't something as simple as her reaction to pain made public? I believe it is because she did/would of failed the test. This could of been done without the need of an MD, Phd, or JD.

Unlike most FReepers I'm willing to give Michael the benefit of the doubt and leave any judgement to the almighty. I think he tried the electrodes to help her, eventually realized part of her brain, a very important part, was liquified and with the best information available decided Terri would not want to live like that.

I'll even go so far as to say it would of been easier for him to walk away from this instead of going through this BS of a media circus and unrelenting and quite often misinformed/uninformed slander that has been made against him.

The reason he hasn't told the Shindlers where Terri's ashes are is he wants her to rest in peace. Not be the focus of yet another cycle of the media circus. That is part of why I believe Michael has taken many of the steps he has taken.

[Dionysius]

Huh?
You scare me, whoever you are. I prefer the status of blithering idiot to your position of demented megalomaniac. The ability to speculate on the will of God is not a product of delusion, but rather an exercise of intellect imbued by faith; and my faith tells me that the Almighty would have preferred Terri Schiavo to live. Does "judgement" for you equate to a return to the spaceship?

[FairOpinion]

"There is a very simple test to see if someone is aware of pain, "

===

Did you know that within the first year that Terri was receiving physical therapy, she indicated that the therapy was painful and that is why they did the bonescan?

Nurses also said in their sworn deposition, that Terri indicated, when she was in pain, as in the time when she had a urinary infection.

So, very clearly she was able to feel pain.