Originally posted by Shar
This is very interesting...I believe people in a coma like this can hear us. Finally, doctors are seeing actual respones in peoples brains. Now how do we wake them up?

Coma patients are like babies. They come out when they are good and ready for the most part.

They have lots of healing and repairing to do... lots of conectins in the brain and elsewhere that have to be repaired and made again. Those injured bodies NEED that 'rest & repair' time.

Energy work does help. As does prayer and 'insisting' in some cases. (I just went through 2 cases in the last 3 months.) The first case was a young man (27) that I didn't know before the mototcyle accident. His wife was yelling at him to wake up as she was trying to get ahold of herself because the plug was going to be pulled.

I did energy work for days on end, and told them to wait - tht he IS HERE! As she was yelling at him, he came out of it!

The other case was ayoung boy (18) I knew before the accident. They weren't sure if he would come out of it or not. He did. He's now in a nursing home and undergoing rehab. But those 'connections' wren't fully made yet. To be honest I think he'd have been better off IN the coma for a bit longer. When he came too (semi), they coulnd't even tell if he was grimacing or if it was his brain going haywire and trying to make connections.

Im glad he came out of it while she was yelling at him. I know my husband and I talked about things like this and said if it ever happen to yell until we wake up. Personally, I feel that a coma is like paralyze sleep where your screaming and noone can hear you. Then finally, you wake up and ask everyone around you why they didnt hear you.

Originally posted by AngelaLadyS

Originally posted by Shar
This is very interesting...I believe people in a coma like this can hear us. Finally, doctors are seeing actual respones in peoples brains. Now how do we wake them up?

Coma patients are like babies. They come out when they are good and ready for the most part.

They have lots of healing and repairing to do... lots of conectins in the brain and elsewhere that have to be repaired and made again. Those injured bodies NEED that 'rest & repair' time.

Its a wrong assumption that nerveconnections repair themselves. Recent studies has shown that 'some' of them can, but most cant.

My father died of strokes. He was 89. A series of small ones until he died. Over a 2 weeks period. For a time, he had a reflex in his hand; he’d “squeeze” your hand, about every 20 seconds. Just enough time for my mother or sister to ask my father, “Can you hear us?” “Do you love us?” But I noticed he had a blank stare. When my turn came, I realized he squeezed my hand whether I asked him a question or not.

One day I came into his hospital room and he was lying on his back looking up at the ubiquitous wall mounted tv. I walked between him and the tv as I approached his bed. His eyes neither blinked nor moved away from the sound dead set. As I stood by him, I waved my hands in front of his eyes. In the apparent path of his vision. No reaction. No reflex. Nothing. I realized my father was “dead.” I sat beside him, silently, for a few minutes, recalling our good times. Then I left, not to return except to drive my mother to see him once a day.

On the 14th day after his first stroke which happened at home, he died. We - my mother and my sister and only sibling - never wanted him on any kind of life support. He had no feeding tube. No oxygen. We agreed that at 89, life support was not beneficial. To him, or to us. My mother and father had both been children in multi-generational households. At an early age, they had learned that it is “natural” for old people to die.

In family discussions prior to his demise we had even addressed the issue of cost. Assuming somewhere “in the sky” health care funding is finite, we asked, “is it better to spend money on an old person or to spend it on a newborn?” We agreed we wanted to die peacefully and painlessly. But we also agreed we had no claim on funds that would produce only bad results. Somewhere in the Holy Bible (or C of E Prayer Book) it says, “ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” So let it be. And to my dear mother and my dear father who both died without intervention, I say, RIP.

Originally posted by Thain Esh Kelch

Originally posted by AngelaLadyS
Coma patients are like babies. They come out when they are good and ready for the most part.

They have lots of healing and repairing to do... lots of connections in the brain and elsewhere that have to be repaired and made again. Those injured bodies NEED that 'rest & repair' time.

Its a wrong assumption that nerveconnections repair themselves. Recent studies has shown that 'some' of them can, but most cant.

Like you said, some can and others cannot. But those that cannot... some of those can be 'rerouted'. It's amazing.

That's among the best news ever seen on this forum, let's just hope that it works reliably and becomes a standard treatment.

posted by Long Lance

That's among the best news ever seen on this forum, let's just hope that it works reliably and becomes a standard treatment.

Uh, L/L, it seems odd this is the only recounting of what would be a news feature world-wide! Fox would run this story 10 times an hour. Pat Robertson would call for more money sent to the 700 Club. Why do we hear nothing?

Originally posted by donwhite

posted by Long Lance

That's among the best news ever seen on this forum, let's just hope that it works reliably and becomes a standard treatment.

Uh, L/L, it seems odd this is the only recounting of what would be a news feature world-wide! Fox would run this story 10 times an hour. Pat Robertson would call for more money sent to the 700 Club. Why do we hear nothing?

The Guardian is a pretty reputable source for info over here in the UK. I highly doubt the content was fabricated, plus it is still early days yet

posted by john_bmth
The Guardian is a pretty reputable source for info over here in the UK. I highly doubt the content was fabricated, plus it is still early days yet

Yes, J/B, I have a high regard for the Guardian. I used to read it when it was the Manchester Guardian Air Edition, a weekly, back in the late 1950s on until the mid 1960s. Alistair Cooke was the Guardian's correspondent in the US of A. It was odd to be able to get better news coverage about America from England albeit a few days later.





[edit on 9/26/2006 by donwhite]

Originally posted by AngelaLadyS
Energy work does help.

Angela, what is "energy work"?

Could you please explain a little about this or provide a link?

Thanks.

posted by Long Lance

posted by donwhite

“ . . it seems odd this is the only news world-wide! Why do we hear nothing? [Edited by Don W]

“ . . it's extremely odd, but it sounds surreal, I doubt it's fabricated . . BTW, have you heard of [dental ultra-sound]? It's a boon for patients - not so much for the industry, though so I’ll leave it at that. [Edited by Don W]

PVS is the result of irreparable damage to the cerebral cortex - the "thinking, feeling" part of the brain - but PVS is not to be confused with brain death. "Persistent" in the title indicates the condition, which unlike coma, is generally deemed permanent, but there are intermittent reports of "recoveries."

Terri Schiavo went into a PVS after collapsing and suffering a heart attack in 1990. In 1998 her husband petitioned to have her gastric feeding tube to be removed; her parents did not believe the diagnosis and took the case to court. Ultimately, the court challenges were unsuccessful and in 2005 Schiavo's feeding tube was removed, leading to her death.

There is no treatment for PVS. Instead, the medical team concentrate on preventing infections and maintaining the patient's physical state as much as possible. For most such patients, life expectancy ranges from two to five years; survival beyond 10 years is unusual.

Such breakthroughs [purported recoveries] are controversial, in both medical and legal circles. The British Medical Association, for example, currently deems such miraculous events not as recoveries from PVS, but as an indicator of an earlier misdiagnosis. From The Guardian for 9/12/2006. Edited by Don W]

We certainly do not know everything. We have to make judgments. We have to rely on experts. Sometimes it is better for one person to die than to be kept breathing, fed by tubes, and doing those basics of life. We have been spared in America - for the most part - the necessity of making life death decions driven by economics. Yet as I posted elsewhere, money for health care is not infinite. Small hospitals can face either closing maternity wards or even the hospital when the cost of treatment of premies skyrockets. After a decent, interval, everyone should have the plugs and tubes pulled and be put into the Hands of God! Like the old Eskimos and the floating ice.


[edit on 9/27/2006 by donwhite]

Such a treatment, if successful, would serve to prevent exactly the scenario you outlined. use it just before disconnecting all machinery (or performing euthanasia), if it fails, well, one can only try.

PS: in Schiavo's case, revival wopuld have been borderline futile i'd say, imagine waking up 20 years later in a totally wrecked body!

[edit on 28-9-2006 by Long Lance]

posted by Long Lance

Such a treatment, if successful, would serve to prevent exactly the scenario you outlined. use it just before disconnecting all machinery (or performing euthanasia), if it fails, well, one can only try. [Edited by Don W]

Euthanasia is a ‘fighting’ word. It puts too much power into the hands of mortal men, men who have demonstrated since recorded history, are unworthy of such power. Which is not to say I myself would not do it under the right circumstances. Consider: surviving an Andean mountains airplane crash when one of the passengers was 3rd degree burned over 90% of his body and us with no morphine. I think I could shoot him, but I could not look at him as I did. How’s that for taking the moral high ground?

Yes, by all means, we’d want to try any (reasonable) scheme before we pulled the plug and walked away. Which brings me to this question. If we are to take seriously those rare episodes where it looks as if the person’s mind is indeed aware but entombed in a failed body, then would it not be better - more humane - to do the lethal injection scenario than to let them linger on in both a helpless and now a hopeless condition for 2 weeks as in the Schiavo case? Now that is indeed cruel and unusual punishment in my mind.

PS: in Schiavo's case, revival would have been borderline futile I’d say, imagine waking up 20 years later in a totally wrecked body!
[Edited by Don W]

Washington Irving did that in 1819, but as has been pointed out by many others the changes in our society came on fast and unrelenting post the Civil War. 1861-1865. I mean to say, 1719 life to 1819 life was not all that much different, but 1819 to 1919 was a sea change not many could grasp. Once changes began, they increased exponentially. There have been some instances of survivors of the Soviet gulag returning and also we have that prisoner in Ohio who pulled 50 years then was released only to seek re-admission back to the prison because he could not adapt. There is a saying around the legal community, “Hard cases make bad law.”



[edit on 9/28/2006 by donwhite]