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My own experience of this unfathomable reach of consciousness drew me to explore uncharted territory in my novel The Half Life of Joshuahen I woke up, I couldn’t remember what year it was and I didn’t know why a doctor was standing over me, speaking Spanish. When I quizzed him, he told me it was 5 March 1992 and that I was in Ecuador. I couldn’t remember anything that happened in 1992, least of all going to Ecuador. Apparently, I had been in a bus crash; there had been a collision with a lorry. It was news to me. In...

A University of Delaware professor is under a barrage of fire for social media posts stating Otto Warmbier, who passed away after 18 months of brutality from the North Korean regime, “got exactly what he deserved” for being a privileged, white male and his type “think nothing of raping drunk girls at frat parties and snorting cocaine.” “Is it wrong of me to think that Otto Warmbier got exactly what he deserved?” Professor Katherine Dettwyler wrote on her Facebook page. “He went to North Korea, for f*ck’s sake, and then acted like a spoiled, naive, arrogant US college student who...

Mother of two has been receiving treatment at Rashid Hospital after slipping into coma in April 2015A Filipina who has been undergoing treatment and physiotherapy at Rashid Hospital after waking up from a nine-month coma is now well on her way to recovery and is ready to go back to the Philippines to see her children. Perlite Almonte, 35, was first admitted to the hospital on April 18, 2015 after she was found unconscious in the bathroom of her house. Doctors who examined Almonte said she had slipped into a coma. Dr Zeyad Al Rais, Head of Critical Care Department...

A chance glance and a big toe saved a 22-year-old woman’s life in the UK, the London Times reports. Sam Hemming, a law school graduate of North Wales’ Bangor University, was being driven home to Hereford by her boyfriend, Tom Curtis, in July when they got into an accident, per the Mirror: The car flipped, and while Curtis wasn’t badly hurt, Hemming was left with broken neck bones, a fractured arm, and severe head injuries, leading doctors to place her in a medically induced coma, the Sun notes. After 19 days, the doctors said hope was gone, and Hemming’s family...

Within 24 hours the patient's responses had improved and in just three days he was fully conscious and had fist-bumped a doctor. Doctors have woken a coma patient for the first time ever by jump-starting his brain using a pioneering ultrasound technique. A saucer-sized device was put against the side of the 25-year-old patient’s head over a 10 minute period. Each of the 10 half-minute, low-intensity pulses created acoustic energy to stimulate brain tissue. The patient’s responses improved measurably within 24 hours. In three days he was fully conscious and had complete language comprehension. He could nod his head “yes”...

Comas. Ha ha. There’s a funny topic. In the news recently was the story of a man named Jake Booth, who is a 35-year-old Army veteran living in Florida. He had suffered a heart attack as a result of a bad case of pneumonia and was put into a medically-induced coma. He woke from the coma on April 3, after a full 48 days of lying unconscious in a hospital bed. As he slowly opened his eyes, he saw his closest friends and family members sitting anxiously by his side, waiting for him to speak his first words. You would...

I thank you in advance for sending up a prayer for my cousin. On his vacation with his wife, he fell in the night in his hotel room (not from his bed, not in the bathroom) and was unconscious when his wife, awakening from sleep, heard the thud of his fall. He was rushed to the hospital where they found way too much blood in the brain to operate. They have him now in a medical coma and it has been several days. He now has an infection in his lungs and blood that they are treating with antibiotics. He...

LifeNews has repeatedly chronicled cases of people who were prematurely declared dead or said to be in supposedly persistent vegetative states who ultimately recovered. We have also covered miraculous cases where an act of God appears to be the only reason or only answer as to why a patient has recovered. File this story under “act of God” or “answered prayers.” Taylor Hale, then 14, suffered traumatic brain injury when she fell off hood of car while horsing around with friends in 2011. She spent a week in medically induced coma to help her brain heal, but she suffered a...

A police officer decorated for his role in the Boston Marathon bombing remains in critical condition in a medically-induced coma after he was shot in the face during a traffic stop, the city's police commissioner said today. Boston Police Commissioner William Evans called the shooting of officer John Moynihan on Friday night "unprovoked." He and five other officers had pulled over a driver in Roxbury, Massachusetts, when the driver began firing at the officers, according to police.

A one-time associate of Osama Bin Laden died in New York on Friday while awaiting trial for allegedly plotting the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Abu Anas al-Libi, 50, was captured in Libya by U.S. commandos in Oct. 2013 and brought to New York where he was due to stand trial. He had been wanted for more than a decade and there was a $5 million reward for his arrest. Al-Libi had pleaded not guilty. The al Qaeda terror suspect has been in poor health and suffered liver disease as a result of hepatitis C, according...

CORPUS CHRISTI, TX, January 30, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- A 12-year-old boy in Corpus Christi, Texas, is facing death this weekend as hospital officials fight to remove him from the ventilator helping him breathe – over the objections of his parents, and despite the fact that another hospital has already agreed to allow a transfer in order to give him lifesaving care. In a case that echoes last year’s contentious legal battle over the fate of Jahi McMath – a 13-year-old declared legally dead by hospital and government officials despite having a heartbeat – young Joey Cronin’s fate is in the...

In what's being called a Christmas 'miracle' by Teri Robert's family, just hours before they planned to end her life on Dec. 22, the beloved wife, mother and grandmother opened her eyes. Roberts still faces an uphill battle after she lost four of her limbs from her illness. Teri Roberts' grieving family had already come to terms with her likely death, planning to turn off her ventilator, when they say a "miracle" happened. The 56-year-old wife, mother and grandmother, had been in a spiraling coma for 12 days when just four hours before her family planned to pull the plug,...

The history of human knowledge as it relates to the human body is a fascinating and terrible thing. In every age, the ability for physicians and other medical practitioners to effectively treat wounds or combat disease has been constrained by the technology – or lack thereof – available at the time. In the past, people often died from illnesses or injuries that are quite treatable today. Over the centuries, we’ve come a long way. Our understanding of human physiology and biology has enabled us to improve quality of life and extend life expectancy beyond anything our ancestors could have imagined.Despite...

In the 1980’s, 12-year-old Martin Pistorious became seriously ill with what doctor’s believed was Cryptococci Meningitis. His health started deteriorating and Martin lost his ability to move, make eye contact and even speak to others. His doctors told his parents, Rodney and Joan Pistorious, to bring him home and let him die. They told them he was as good as a vegetable.However, he didn’t die. Joan said, “Martin just kept going, just kept going.” According to NPR news, his father would get up at 5 o’clock in the morning, get him dressed, load him in the car, take him to...

Cases like this are fueling a growing debate about the accuracy of "vegetative state" and "brain death" diagnoses. airlift(Harlow, England) - Martin Pistorius hates Barney. And it's no wonder why. For 12 years, while he was in a coma that doctors described as a "vegetative state," nurses, thinking that he couldn't see or hear anything, played endless re-runs of Barney as he sat, strapped into his wheel chair. (Photo via Life Site News) But Martin wasn't the "vegetable" that doctors said he was. In fact, he could see and hear everything. "I cannot even express to you how much I...

Democratic Nebraska Senate candidate Dave Domina is out with a new political ad that features a bedridden coma patient decked out in one of the campaign’s T-shirts. The ad had raised questions about the ethics of using a coma patient to give the politician a boost in the polls. Domina, who is running against Republican challenger Ben Sasse, also has come under fire in recent weeks for his previous work defending a Nazi war criminal, whom Domina referred to as “honorable” in an interview with the Free Beacon. The ad in questions feature Pappillion, Nebraska resident Deborah Chinnow, and her daughter Jenna, who is...

The new research could help doctors to quickly identify patients who are aware despite appearing unresponsive and unable to communicate. Researchers from University of Cambridge in the UK have identified hidden networks in vegetative patients that could support consciousness, even when a patient appear to be unresponsive. There’s been a lot of interest lately into how much patients in vegetative states, such as comas, are aware of their surroundings. Recently, research involving functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning has shown that even patients who are unable to respond or move are able to carry out mental tasks, such as imagining...

At age 75, the legendary songwriter and beloved recording artist Gordon Lightfoot is still working hard and enjoying it more than ever. The creator of such standards as If You Could Read My Mind, Early Morning Rain, Carefree Highway and Sundown still performs upwards of eighty concerts a year in North America. "We love the work" is the joyful mantra his associates hear him say all the time. Even after waking up from a six-week coma following a burst abdominal artery in 2002, Gordon worked from his hospital bed and polished the final tracks for his twentieth album. It would...

"A West Point man was taken to hospital with life-threatening injuries after he and a friend were attacked by a group of around 20 people in a Huddle House parking lot, police said, potentially as retaliation for Michael Brown's killing. Ralph Weems IV, who is white, was injured early Saturday but is now in fair condition at North Mississippi Medical Center, hospital spokeswoman Genie Causey said. A relative, Bradley Barnes of Madison, told The Associated Press by telephone on Sunday that his brother-in-law was in a medically induced coma following brain surgery. 'They're going to try and wake him up...

LifeNews has repeatedly chronicled cases of people who were prematurely declared dead or said to be in supposedly persistent vegetative states who ultimately recovered. Now comes the story of Lexi Hansen, a BYU student who suffered critical head injuries last week after being hit by a car. Hansen, 18, was alert and breathing on her own Tuesday, though she was still listed in critical but stable condition. She even tried to get out of her hospital bed. While she has a long road to recovery ahead, her family believes they have witnessed a miracle. lexihansen“When they brought her in, the...