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 ...
Not everyone is pleased with this hopeful news, however. The Kevorkian vultures among us to are filled with anger, misery, and despair because of it.
LOL, you are one nasty Broomhildy. Sorry about your parents though.
Comatose patients are still there, it's a matter of turning on the right switch.
ping for tomorrow
Honestly, why am I nasty? Because I'm a realist? Because I believe there are things WORSE than death? Because I believe the soul goes one beyond the confines of a body that doesn't work? Does that make me nasty? I just don't understand.
And they will continue to deny, deny, deny.
Leda, actually click through the link and read the article. Then I have a question.
What I wonder is if it will help less severely brain injured people recover lost faculties, such as short-term memory or anosmia, among other residual effects.
Thanks I just did.
Curiosity got me to do it.
Gonna ask to try it for my son who has alot of uncontrollable movement from his brain damage.
Can't hurt.
None of the above. You're nasty because you tell people to STFU when you disagree with them. There is a difference Hildy between folks who have simply run out of time and those who are much younger but have electrical problems. The analogy you''re making with your folks doesn't hold. Ambien is a cheap drug and governement is their to protect those who can't protect themselves. That doesn't include me BTW. :-}
Best of luck. God bless.
What does that mean? Really? So, let's say...people under a certain age, we'll say, 50, should be kept alive no matter what and people over 50 should die? I really don't know what you're trying to say.
Hey you!
Have a look!
Crossed fingers and prayers for your son!
Let us know what happens!
"We have always been told there is no recovery from persistent vegetative state - "
Interesting article - But it dosen't say that any of the cases cited were diagnosed as being in a persistant vegitative state - nor if this could be considered a recovery.
"Holroyd remains perplexed. "There is a measurement of the depths of coma called the Glasgow scale, with three being the worst and 15 being normal," he says. "Riaan was six, but within 10 minutes of taking the pill he is up to nine."
Interesting that he is still on the "depth of Coma" scale - Assuming that 15 is aware and 12 is during a lecture on Chemistry with a hangover. .... ( it's a joke ! )
And we need to seriously begin to address the "whatever it takes" factor -
Well, that puts me in the deep freeze. :-}
Ah, Ambien ... there is also that "Ambien effect" that, when not bringing forth legislators for 3 AM roll calls, does have some people up and functioning while still asleep.
I find it curious the company that developed zolpidem doesn't want to be involved in the testing on brain damaged patients. You would think that they would be shouting this from the rooftops (even though the drug is now available as a generic). Strange ...
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