Touchy Subject

My diagnosis is Semi-Vegetative. It's never heard of n I write.   -Angela
 

People are still up in arms about the Teri Schiavo case. So I'll go one back. Who remembers Karen Ann Quinlan?

I was a  little kid, but I remember the warning. Don't do drugs, or end up like that Quinlan girl!

This video talks about guardianship. Guardianship is where a big mess up occurred with me. Keep that in mind. I will come back to it as the issue now has the potential to surface.

After I opened my eyes, I didn't speak or move. I looked like how Teri Schiavo was. I was made Persistent Vegetative State. This is just an extension of the coma.

So I progressed from a closed-eye coma to an open-eye coma to whatever I am now. Is now a coma that talks?

It seems to be political. The word "vegetative" has to be kept. That word is basically a coma.

I went to a rehab after I opened my eyes using my work insurance. I think they wanted to say I had Locked-In Syndrome. I was not Vegetative. I had to leave when my insurance ran out.

Before vocalizing, I too communicated with one eye. 

"The last time I saw Margaret Worthen was in November 2012. She was in New York participating in a study of patients with severe brain injury. As soon as I walked into her room, I knew something had changed. She was still immobile, but she noticed my presence, was more attentive and engaged. And there was something else: She at times was able to use her left eye to answer simple yes or no questions. That morning, she seemed to relish her new found fluency. She responded with verve, as if the determined downward swoop of her eye could signal an exclamation point." https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/24/opinion/minimally-conscious-brain-civil-rights.html?smid=tw-share

This woman was reclassified from PVS, Persistent Vegetative State, to MCS, Minimally Conscious State. 

What happened in that woman's case never happened in mine. I can go straight from Vegetative to Conscious. I don't appear to be vegetative anything now, unless you use the government's reason of being unable to swallow.

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Now we go back to guardianship. When I was in a closed-eye coma, a payee was appointed. They were eventually dismissed, but my diagnosis wasn't changed. I was still a vegetable. I was made a vegetable that was able to handle money. (This just screams Locked-In Syndrome.)

I left hospital life. That was Dec 2002 - March 2006, but it's just easier to say 4 years. I know it is 3 years and 4 months. I was moved around so much that I'd have to give an itinerary.

I've gone on to start writing. That sounds uneventful and it should. I have a big problem now. I'm not a legal entity. That's why I can't be studied... I can't give consent while in a coma. There is no guardian.

What do I do if my story is picked up? Decline because I can't give consent is not an option here. Watch me think of something.