I read this story about this woman who got hit by a car when she was 18 or something... that day she'd broken up with her boyfriend and gone out on the town... she was walking across the street when a drunk driver hit her. She was in a coma. Years went by. Decades went by. Her parents were very attentive, and then one day they just freaked out and ran away to live in a trailer park in Arizona for a couple of years. They finally got themselves back together and moved back to their hometown and resumed care of their daughter, but they worked with therapists and people to slowly remove her from their lives, so that they'd only visit her every so often. They had to figure out how to live a normal life (and provide a stable home for her little brother!).

One day the father picked up the phone and someone said, "Hi Dad."

It was their daughter. She woke up. 20 years had gone by. She still thought she was 18, but she seemed to know about events like 9/11, which she could only have known by listening to the TV in her room while she was in her comatose state.

After reading this story, I began doing some research on comatose states. (uh, instead of research on volcanic ash falls.... leave me alone!)

Obviously this girl's case was way different than Terry Schiavo, whose mind was total jell-o. Through the years she'd moved her eyelids now and then, and her parents had done some physical and swallowing therapy with her so that those muscles wouldn't turn to glop. She still can't swallow well, but she's making progress.

They say that there are tons of different kinds of comatose states, from the "for all practical purposes dead" kind like Terry Schiavo to people who are even more aware than this girl Sarah Scantlin, who are literally locked inside their unresponsive bodies, totally aware of everything around them but unable to move. So maybe like Uma Thurman in Kill Bill- I got the impression that that was the way hers was. How she was able to like kill people and do karate after letting her muscles pond and atrophy for weeks or months is unknown. That usually isn't part of the recovery, if there is one.
The articles say that that kind of comatose state is definitely the worst kind from a philosophical perspective (usually from a medical perspective it is good because it means you aren't totally braindead) for the person in it as well as for the family, who knows that the person is "stuck" in there. One man thought that this was the state that his son was in- and since he had nothing to gain from being in the hospital, they just brought him home and treated him like a normal member of the family, even though he couldn't respond to anything. They took him out with them and took him on vacations and had birthdays for him and read to him and took pictures of him... and lo and behold eventually he woke up and he was so grateful because he was completely conscious that entire time, and it's like he still got to be a part of their lives even though he couldn't relay to them that he was there.

As I said though, it would be the best state to be in if you were planning on making a full recovery, even though I'm sure during the interim you would wish multiple times that you weren't so conscious. Sarah's mind is coming back, but she still thinks she's 18 and it's going to be a bit of a shock realizing that she isn't anymore. They did say that she could recognize old friends who had aged 20 years, which is pretty good. She kept asking after the family pets, who were of course long dead.

But talk about BOREDOM! Talk about LONELINESS! I first started thinking about this in terms of blindness, but that kind of coma would be so much worse.

Now I am alone in here, free to explore only the lonely corridors of my own mind, sifting through boxes in search of the rainbow, finding only scattered memories that fade everyday just as the light surely faded from my life. Deep within my own skin, at the bottom of a well, willing myself to climb out but endowed with arms I cannot operate. Powerless.
And blindness..... not the failure of focus, for which the conscious brain has forgotten the pathway, but the slow fading of the light, the rapid confusion of twilight, grasping at colors and images in desperate self-arrest down a steepening slope towards a void of blackness.


In other news, today my colleague was showing us his final poster for the conference and I spotted three or four pretty bad misspellings (centerimeter, accumilation, occurence) Our advisor wanted him to reprint it because the poster quality was bad because of the printer. This wasn't such a huge deal because he'd already made the poster into a pdf and he could just send it again at higher resolution. There was no way for me to bring the misspellings to notice without doing so in front of our advisor, which I felt like was in bad taste, so I just didn't mention them at all. I never know what to do in cases like that. Obviously had he solicited criticism I would have offered these corrections, and equally obviously if he hadn't intended to print it again I would have totally let it go. Should I have mentioned them?

Only if you could've pulled him aside and told him

That story is.. sweet in a way, and so sad. If I ever go into a coma, I want to be concious like that and wake up in 2 years. That way, not ALOT has changed.. but yeah. I also want everyone I've ever met to come and visit me..
» Dilated on 2007-03-05 09:46:25

yeah, and hopefully while they were at my bedside they would tell me everything that they'd ever wanted to tell me but couldn't. But what they wouldn't know is that I could hear them.
» Zanzibar on 2007-03-05 10:21:23

What if boredom is actually a subcatagory of loneliness?

I don't get bored. Lonely is what I do feel, though.

I pray that I never get in a coma. I know no one would ever do what that family did for that boy. Heck, I don't have much of a family left, much less friends.
» elessar257 on 2007-03-05 11:14:36

I hope he doesn't blame you for not telling him about the spelling mistakes.
» Nuttz on 2007-03-05 11:42:35

I hope he does blame you and hates you forever.
» Dilated on 2007-03-05 11:52:25

I am sure she knew everything that was going on which brings me to think that she probably remembered that her parents left her for two years. I would not give up on my child like that. shit! That pissed me off that they did that.
» KkaMA67 on 2007-03-06 11:50:31

i think so
but im not sure i understand the situation quite totally.
» middaymoon on 2007-03-06 09:16:02

The properties turns out
Certainly. cheap xanax no prescription It is remarkable, rather valuable piece generic xanax bars There is something similar? cheap xanax online Logical question buy xanax uk What from this follows? xanax medication 819e0d
» Mervin (212.91.180.250) on 2011-06-08 08:32:08

Name.

URL.

[to enter your email, use "mailto:[email protected]"]
Subject.

Comment.

Word verification.

Copy the first 4 characters only.

If you are a member, try logging in again or accessing this page here.