If you are wondering why I'm still vegetative after all these years, my heart stopped, so I should die soon...17 yrs ago.
I was in a real coma 17 yrs ago.
My body is messed up; ultra stiff and it took years to loosen up one hand to type.
Society has a 'let the government handle it' attitude.
The government is always right [yeah right] and won't back down. They said I was in a coma and darn it they're right! They've gone out of way to keep the word VEGETATIVE.
In the early 1970s, I worked for a doctor, a PT, and an OT who ran a small clinic focused on supporting families and individuals who didn't put their kids in the state institutions. There was no community support at that time. We had a number of persons who had the equivalent of persistent vegetative state today, know as akenetic mutism. Roughly half of these individuals eventually became at least partially conscious. One in particular that I remember was a 17 year old girl who had a reaction to an anesthetic during a tonsillectomy. Her heart stopped for 20 minutes and she had a significant amount of brain stem damage. No medical person thought she was aware of anything, but her parents said, even with her limited movements, she had a different reaction to males than females. The OT took a note care and wrote, "blink your right eye" on it and held in in front of her eyes. She blinked her right eye. Then she did the same with the left eye. You could have heard a pin drop. The medical people said it was a trick. They never changed her diagnosis, even after she went home. There was similar case with a young man who was struck on his bike by a distracted driver and had a diagnosis of decerebrate rigidity. He too could communicate through his eyes and his family did so with him at home for the following two years before he died with pneumonia. He listened to his favorite music, he watched the TV shows that he liked, he had conversations with family members, all using blinks. His diagnosis was never changed as well. It's medicine defending its power regardless of how it affects people's lives.
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