Sunday, February 22, 2015

I am permanently unconscious.


I am "permanently" unconscious. It doesn't matter if I now appear to be conscious. The word "Persistent" had come to mean "Permanent" in PVS (Persistent Vegetative State). Once a "vegetable" is always a "vegetable." The word "Persistent"at least had hope.
 
"Vegetables" only receive daily care, usually in a medical facility. I live on my own. I do not receive that kind of care. I do not receive therapy. I do not receive rehab. I  do not have a neurologist, nor do I receive any neurological care or follow-up. "Vegetables" don't get any of those services.

(PVS not MCS, Minimally Conscious State, in this case.) If you were called a "vegetable" at one time you were probably diagnosed as MCS. "Far too often, patients [PVS] ... are given up for gone, left to languish in nursing homes where no one bothers with physical therapy or even to check for glimmers of regained consciousness." http://www.wired.com/2013/02/searching-for-consciousness/ I've been able to get out of that situation, http://thoughtfulveg.blogspot.com/2014/12/vegetable-on-loose.html.)

That I talk and write now does not matter. I still have the PVS diagnosis. I have been unconscious for years. I have been writing for years. I couldn't write in the hospital. Time has passed. The diagnosis is "permanent" and therefore sticks. If anything is added, the primary is still there. I am permanently without consciousness.








 -there is no hope.



  

Monday, February 16, 2015

Getting Better


"Lost in thought?" Two different people asked the same thing on different days, in the span of a week. No, I am not lost in thought. I am "veggin out." Literally.  http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=vegin+out

I believe this is what happened with "vegetative." I've slowly gotten better. (Years ago a doctor at Stanford said "you are getting better." He was describing the remarkable progress I was making in completing daily living skills.) As time went on, I continued "getting better." It was said I was "semi-vegetative" at a few hospitals into my stay.  (That's a couple years after my injury.) I was no longer "vegetative." I went home and medical records ran out. People thought I died. I didn't. I kept slowly getting better.

I live on my own. I do receive outside care. One of my daughters is now employed by that service agency and can personally do the care. She lives with me.

You know, it appears that recovery of skills are slow, but maybe it isn't for me. Maybe the typical person who is vegetative is on the regular track and I'm on a fast track. That means all of this has been fast. Maybe, I am actually attaining new skills fast, not recovering old skills really slow. (The kids I worked with http://thoughtfulveg.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-bleeding-brain.html learned new skills. I only know teaching and education. There is no rehab.)



Friday, February 13, 2015

Neuroplasticity on Fire


I first heard the term HYPERPLASTICITY in a podcast. (It follows. It's at 36:06.)



Plasticity sped up? I was fascinated.

The following is mostly hypothetical. The first sentence in this video clip...

"It would be speculation to say...."

"Hyperplasticity relates to neurology by incorporating physical (thermodynamic) law into the study the individual nerve cell cycle to discover how the synaptic communication of an old cell relates that information to the new cell in its place. Encouraging new cell growth in grey material of the brain is the object always." I explained how that, the information transfer, happened, http://thoughtfulveg.blogspot.com/2013/08/an-exact-copy.html . It was DNA replication that happened in me.

That DNA replication will speed-up in me, http://thoughtfulveg.blogspot.com/2014/12/cant-damage-me.html  . Neuroplasticity will happen fast. Neuroplasticity will look like it's on fire. It will look like hyper-plasticity.