Posted on 09/13/2006 11:34:27 AM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
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?
...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.
...It all sounds miraculous, you might think. And in a way, it is.
...Across three continents, brain-damaged patients are reporting remarkable improvements after taking a pill that should make them fall asleep but that, instead, appears to be waking up cells in their brains that were thought to have been dead.[snip]
..."The results were so unbelievable that I got other colleagues to check my findings," says Clauss, who now works at the Royal Surrey County Hospital in Guildford. "We did scans before and after we gave [the patient] zolpidem. Areas that appeared black and dead beforehand began to light up with activity afterwards. I was dumbfounded - and I still am."
...No one yet knows exactly how a sleeping pill could wake up the seemingly dead brain cells, but Nel and Clauss have a hypothesis. ... during [PVS] the receptors are in some way changed or deformed so that they respond to zolpidem differently from normal receptors, ... it makes dormant areas of the brain function again and some comatose patients wake up.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
"Then he turned his head in my direction. I said, 'Louis, can you hear me?' And he said, 'Yes.' I said, 'Say hello, Louis', and he said, 'Hello, mummy.' I couldn't believe it. I just cried and cried."
Hughes was called over and other staff members gathered in disbelief. "Sienie told me he was talking and I said he couldn't be - it wasn't possible," she recalls. "Then I heard him."
Maybe we should put it into the drinking water... wake a few folks up.
This is such an amazing article, was posted before but worthy of repost. Hope this discussion doesn't get derailed like last one.
Unlike Patches Kennedy,who is still brain dead
Unlike Patches Kennedy,who is still brain dead
A true Miracle drug...........
Twice in a row
Ping
If it does we can send both side to the old thread. : )
I am planning on e mailing this article to our Dr. who is the Prof. in this Dept. and see if he thinks it can help our needs.
Too late for Terri Schiavo courtesy of the murdering Mickey Schiavo.
Grat article!
This is truly a remarkable finding - the implications are HUGE. If the reports are true, it's possible that this medication is having the same effect on stroke and hypoxia victims, some years later.
This would indeed be a miracle worthy of praising God!
Anyway--high hopes, and ka-ching!! (I've got some money on pharms).
I took an Ambien once so I could experience a vegetative state!
I'm just curious how exactly does forced starvation and dehydration fits into this?
"...No one yet knows exactly how a sleeping pill could wake up the seemingly dead brain cells, but Nel and Clauss have a hypothesis. ... during [PVS] the receptors are in some way changed or deformed so that they respond to zolpidem differently from normal receptors, ... it makes dormant areas of the brain function again and some comatose patients wake up."
I always thought that giving a hit of speed to someone in a coma from OD'ing on sleeping pills would have the same effect.
The discovery of zolpidem's miraculous awakenings happened in 1999? I'm sorry, but I'm resentful that nobody thought to contact Terri Schindler Schiavo's parents or doctors. One of the most famous "PVS" patients in the world, over whose life a legal battle was fought and lost. While the news about zolpidem is incredible and amazing, I am very disheartened that nobody tried this on Terri (at least, to my knowledge).
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