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ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. -- A firefighter brain-damaged in a 1995 roof collapse had an "amazing" weekend, recognizing and speaking with his four sons and other family and friends for the first time in years, a family spokesman said Monday. "I want to talk to my wife," Donald Herbert said out of the blue Saturday at the skilled nursing facility where he has lived for more than seven years. Staff members put Linda Herbert on the telephone. It was the first of many conversations he had during a 14-hour stretch, Herbert's uncle, Simon Manka said. "How long have I been away?"...

A horse-riding accident left a vibrant 18-year-old Stephanie Martin comatose, hooked up to feeding and breathing tubes. Doctors didn't give her a chance, but her mother did. Five years later, after about 300 hyperbaric oxygen treatments in Victoria -- at the Hyperbaric Oxygenation Corporation's centre in Victoria -- the Idaho woman is slowly improving her quality of life. "She was in a coma. ... As low in a coma and as far as you can go -- right next to death," said Lori Martin. "They had written her off," said Humphrey Killam, a director of the hyperbaric centre. Doctors told...

When Sandy Burke looks at Terri Schiavo, she sees her son. Fifteen years after his car crashed into a tree, Richard Burke hovers between what doctors say is a persistent vegetative state and minimal consciousness. He sits propped in a wheelchair during the day, his face largely blank, his eyes flickering open and shut. At 43, he relies on others for every need. When his mother speaks to him, he sometimes turns his eyes in her direction and smiles or offers a thumbs up or down. Sometimes, he doesn't. No one knows how much he understands. A few years ago,...

<p>I watch nourishment flowing into a slim tube that runs through a neat, round, surgically created orifice in Ms Schiavo's abdomen, and I'm almost envious. What effortless intake! Due to a congenital neuro-muscular disease, I am having trouble swallowing, and it's a constant struggle to get by mouth the calories my skinny body needs. For whatever reason, I'm still trying, but I know a tube is in my future. So, possibly, is speechlessness. That's a scary thought. If I couldn't speak for myself, would I want to die? If I become uncommunicative, a passive object of other people's care, should I hope my brain goes soft and leaves me in peace?</p>

By the time you read this, Teresa Schiavo may be dead of starvation as required by Florida Judge George Greer. Thousands of people have produced millions of words on this subject. I should write nothing, unless I have more to offer than the MSM (mainstream media). I do. Personal experience colors what I say. On 1 January 1994, my mother was taken to Mission Memorial Hospital in Asheville with serious injuries from an auto accident. She’d suffered both a heart attack and a stroke after the accident. She was in a coma, but still alive. Seven years before, her life...

Anyone watch the O'Reilly Factor tonight? I try not to watch O'Reilly too much anymore since he has become so smug and egotistical but I sometimes catch the first few minute of his Talking Points to see what the major topic is. Of course tonight was the Terri Schiavo situation and it's impact. I was almost horrified when O'Reilly laid out his feelings for what should happen to Terri Schaivo and people in Persistent Vegetative States, etc.. O'Reilly feels that the State and more important the Doctors should be the final arbiters of who should live and who should die...

Terry Wallis' 19-year journey back to consciousness is a remarkable story. But in June 1984, the time of his car crash, he was just another statistic; one more name on the list of 1.5 million Americans who sustain a brain injury each year. Perhaps it's going too far to say that Wallis was one of the fortunate ones, but he did at least survive his brain injury. Each year in America, 50,000 people are not so lucky. Brain injury is the great silent epidemic. In the US alone there are estimated to be 5.3 million people (more than 2% of...

Terri’s Bishop Issues Bizarre Statement Implies Schindlers should accept her imminent death and reconcile with her killer Terri’s Bishop Issues Bizarre Statement Implies Schindlers should accept her imminent death and reconcile with her killer ST. PETERSBURG, March 2, 2005 (LifeSitenews.com) - For some time now, pro-life Catholics fighting to save the life of Terri Schiavo, have been clamouring for a statement or intervention by the bishop of St. Petersburg Florida, Terri’s home diocese. Now that such a statement has finally been made, the same pro-lifers might well be wishing Bishop Robert N. Lynch had maintained his silence. The Florida Catholic...

An Aliamanu couple says a critical mix-up at an Oahu hospital has left their otherwise healthy newborn brain damaged and in a coma. It happened when the mother delivered the baby boy at Tripler Army Medical Center on Jan. 14.

Car boot woman may be brain damaged February 18, 2005 - 8:09PM The condition of Melbourne woman Maria Korp, found near death in the boot of a car, has improved but she remains on life support. Doctors said Mrs Korp was now in a serious but stable condition five days after being found unconscious and in a critical condition. The 50-year-old Mickleham mother of two was found in the car near Melbourne's Shrine of Remembrance on Sunday, four days after she was reported missing. A spokesman for The Alfred hospital said Mrs Korp had been taken off the critical list...

Breaking the Silence 20-year wait to hear their daughter speak again is over for parents of near-fatal accident victim By Clara Kilbourn The call came Feb. 4. "Are you sitting down? There's someone here who wants to talk to you." Betsy Scantlin recognized the caller, Jennifer Trammell, director of social services at Golden Plains Health Care Center. The next voice was different. "Hi, Mom." "Sarah, is that you?" "Yeah." "Hi, Dad," she said, then, slowly drawing out the words, "Happy Valentine's Day." For 20 years, Betsy and Jim Scantlin had waited to again hear their daughter's voice. Jim wanted to...

Saturday, Feb. 12, 2005 A celebration was held at Golden Plains Nursing Home for Sarah Scantlin. She’s essentially been asleep for 20 years, but now she’s awake and talking. “I think it’s truly a miracle, that she hasn’t been able to communicate at all for 20 years and she’s talking,” says Dr. Bradley Scheel, Sarah’s doctor. “Hi,” says Sarah Scantlin. “Many times I’ve had to pretend that Sarah wasn’t around, because I couldn’t take anymore,” says Sarah’s father, Jim Scantlin. “You kind of just resign yourself to that’s the way life is,” says Jim Scantlin, Jr., Sarah’s brother. Twenty years...

Hutchinson-- For 20 years, Sarah Scantlin has been mostly oblivious to the world around her -- the victim of a drunken driver who struck her down as she walked to her car. Today, after a remarkable recovery, she can talk again. Scantlin's father knows she will never fully recover, but her newfound ability to speak and her returning memories have given him his daughter back. For years, she could only blink her eyes -- one blink for "no," two blinks for "yes" -- to respond to questions that no one knew for sure she understood. "I am astonished how primal...

A US woman who has spent the past 20 years in a coma-like state has inexplicably awoken and can now speak, news reports said. Sarah Scantlin was 18 years old when, as a pedestrian, she was injured in a hit-and-run accident that left her in a semi-vegetative condition, aware of her surroundings but unable to speak or move. Since that time, she has been in a care centre in the Midwest US state of Kansas. Scantlin's parents unexpectedly received a phone call last week from the nursing home where their now 38-year-old daughter resides. However, instead of the call being...

Sarah Scantlin was knocked into a coma by a drunk driver 20 years ago has begun to speak and remember her past. Her brain was injured so badly that doctors first feared she would spend her life in a vegetative state, spending years unable to form words or make any sounds other than loud cries. A week ago Sarah began speaking and doctors have no explanation. The parents, brother and sister of Terri Schindler Schiavo hope the Florida courts will see this miracle and think of Terri. Video tape shown today on CNN Headline News of Sarah with her mother...

How To Talk When You Can't Speak How To Talk When You Can't Speak Communicating with unconscious minds. By Clive Thompson Posted Thursday, Feb. 10, 2005, at 3:33 PM PT This week, Neurology published an unsettling study of two brain-damaged men who are "minimally conscious"—able to breathe on their own but otherwise generally unresponsive. When neuroscientists scanned the patients' brains as they played audiotapes of loved ones, the activity was strikingly normal. The visual cortex of one of the men even lit up in a way that suggested he was visualizing the stories..... If these devices ever do become ready...

Thousands of brain-damaged people who are treated as if they are almost completely unaware may in fact hear and register what is going on around them but be unable to respond, a new brain-imaging study suggests. The findings, if repeated in follow-up experiments, could have sweeping implications for how to care best for these patients. Some experts said the study, which appeared yesterday in the journal Neurology, could also have consequences for legal cases in which parties dispute the mental state of an unresponsive patient. The research showed that the brain-imaging technology, magnetic resonance imaging, can be a powerful tool...

HOUSTON -- A Houston judge has ruled that Texas Children's Hospital can't remove a baby from life support even though doctors say he is suffering a slow death... The baby's mother said she was pleased by the decision. "I choose life and I love my son," said Wanda Hudson. "When I see him he looks like a normal child so he just needs to finish growing and developing. He has his arms, his legs, his eyes, ears, nose, everything." "There is a chance the baby will survive," said Mario Cabellero, Hudson's attorney. "And as long as there's a chance, the...

ROME (Reuters) - An Italian pensioner committed suicide after his wife fell into a coma, but just hours after he killed himself the woman woke up, Italian media reported on Saturday. Recalling the end of "Romeo and Juliet," the 70-year-old man, Ettore, who had sat by his wife's bedside for four months after she slipped into a coma following a heart attack, finally gave up hope and gassed himself in the garage of his family home. Less than a day later, his wife, Rossana, woke up in her hospital bed in Padua and immediately asked for him. The northern town...

ROME (Reuters) - An Italian pensioner committed suicide after his wife fell into a coma, but just hours after he killed himself the woman woke up, Italian media reported on Saturday. Recalling the end of "Romeo and Juliet," the 70-year-old man, Ettore, who had sat by his wife's bedside for four months after she slipped into a coma following a heart attack, finally gave up hope and gassed himself in the garage of his family home. Less than a day later, his wife, Rossana, woke up in her hospital bed in Padua and immediately asked for him. The northern town...