Direct hit!
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 ...
Please let us know how things go for him.
No, off-label uses of medications can be covered by insurance, so long as the physician determines the medication is medically appropriate.
Most of the medications I've had to take during my lifetime were prescribed for off-label use. Sometimes people have rare conditions. In the rheumatic diseases, meds are often studied for use in only one class of disease---say Rheumatoid Arthritis---but they end up being used also for patients with Lupus and many dozens of other systemic inflammatory diseases, some of which are fairly rare and would never have specific drugs developed for them.
What would you do if Kevorkian vultures became a majority in Congress and passed legislation mandating the euthanasia of all nasty, spiteful, bile-soaked souls like yourself?
Forgive me, onyx, but I don't see a personal attack against any other FReeper in post #5, do you?
Couldn't hurt if Ambian does not interfere with any other RX's he is taking.
Strokes are brain bleeds which cause damage so I don't see how it can hurt to try.
Aslong as there is a monopoly on used body parts I'll remain skeptical of motive.
Ugh! The money issue. I know you didn't make that the case but your aunt sounds like some of my husband's aunts. Three of the family took care of his grandma in her days. His mom did the most. Once she died the rest of the family came down and even argued about what they were going to get. "I don't need this and I know you do, but my mom promised it to me." His uncle only wanted his dad's tools and that was really it.
ProLife Ping!
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Best I could do at 4:30 AM my time:)
Carolyn
Oh, the law, as written, allows an unfit person to serve as a guardian? The intent of the law, as written, is to use a half-remembered, decade old conversation as a substitute for a living will? The law as written now defines food and water as medical care?
Even if they were following "the law as written" (HA!) they were just doing the same thing that Northerners did when they followed the Fugitive Slave Law and sent escapees back down the river. They're only doing the same thing that an abortionist does when he follows the law as written and rips a small child limb from limb before throwin it in the trash. Keep on cheering for it and pretending you're a moral human being.
Excellent point.
Every post you have made on this thread has been nasty. THAT is what makes you nasty.
Can you show me someone who thought that Terri's wishes were being followed, but opposed them and wanted her to be forced to live?
Direct hit!
And that is how they will justify it when they come for you. Try not to act too surprised.
Here, now you can print your "argument" out and color him. Season-appropriate to boot!
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