How to get out of a coma and what after?
Coma is traditionally considered an intermediate state between life and death: the patient's brain does not respond to external stimuli, consciousness fades away, only the simplest reflexes remain … Doctors usually advise relatives of a comatose patient either to wait for him to wake up on his own, or, if the coma lasts a long time, turn it off from the life support system.
After a coma - a different personality
Sometimes things that are difficult to explain in a rational way happen to people who have experienced a coma. So, having received a head injury. 35-year-old Englishwoman Heather Howland from an exemplary wife and mother suddenly turned into a sexually obsessed lady.
The misfortune happened in May 2005. Heather suffered several cerebral hemorrhages and was in a coma for ten days. When Heather was discharged from the hospital, her husband Andy took leave to care for his wife. At first, he did not notice anything strange. Three months later, Heather left the house for the first time. She went to the store. Andy, watching his wife from the window, was amazed to see that she walked up to the house opposite and spoke to a worker who was doing repairs in the absence of the owners. Then they both went up to the terrace and closed the door behind them. Through the glass one could see that a man and a woman were kissing …
Since that time, Andy's life has turned into a complete nightmare. Heather does not miss a single man. It is worth leaving her alone, as she heads to a bar for singles and meets there with seekers of sexual adventures. From time to time, friends call Andy at work and ask him to urgently come and pick up his wife, who behaves inappropriately, molesting unfamiliar men.
Doctors believe that head trauma has led to irritation of the brain centers that are responsible for sexuality. They prescribed the woman a special course of drugs that suppress sex drive.
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Heather herself wants to make a difference. She voluntarily agreed not to leave the house during her treatment. The lady says that after recovering, she had more than 50 sexual partners. “I woke up in the hospital with an incredible need to have sex all the time,” she says, “and it doesn't matter with whom. I don't recognize myself. I'm not one of those who meet men on the street and invite them home to have sex."
More recently, newspapers have reported about 6-year-old California resident Zoe Bernstein. The girl after the car accident spent about a month in a coma, and when she woke up, her relatives did not recognize her.
“She became a completely different person,” says Zoe's mother. - The girl developed the so-called attention deficit disorder. The exemplary child has turned into a little bully. Although, maybe this is not so bad - after the accident, she began to look more like her peers. On the other hand, this is a completely different girl, and the one, the former Zoe, who was before the car accident, most likely will never return."
Several years ago, a 13-year-old Croatian woman fell into a coma for 24 hours after a car accident. When the girl woke up, it turned out that she spoke German fluently. Before that, she studied German at school, but she did not have much success. But the girl completely forgot her native Croatian after a coma!
And 26-year-old Briton Chris Birch fell into a coma after being hit hard during rugby training. “When I came to, I realized very quickly that my orientation had changed,” says Chris. "I became gay and I took it for granted."
According to psychiatrist Miho Milas, such cases are known to science. Perhaps the secret lies in the unexpectedly awakened genetic memory. But what if, after a coma, a completely different human personality can settle in us?
Inner life
For a long time, doctors were convinced that in the comatose phase, the patient's brain is asleep, and he is not aware of what is happening around. Although there are many cases when, after coming out of a coma, people said that they heard and understood everything that was happening, but could not react to it. British neurosurgeons managed to prove that a person in a coma does not turn into "vegetables" at all - he able to think and even react to words addressed to him.
2000 - Canadian Scott Routley got into a car accident, after which he fell into a coma. Despite the condition, the patient could open his eyes, move his fingers and distinguish between day and night. This patient became interested in Professor Adrian Owen from the University of Cambridge, who, together with his colleagues, developed a special technique that makes it possible to "read" the thoughts of people in a coma.
After scanning Scott's brain, the researchers asked him a series of questions, to which the answer was either positive or negative. At the same time, the tomograph recorded any manifestations of brain activity. The researchers concluded that Scott is aware of who he is and where he is, and responds to external stimuli. In particular, he "replied" that he did not feel pain.
Later, a group of scientists examined a 23-year-old girl whose brain was damaged after an accident. The patient could neither move nor speak. When the scientists asked the girl to pretend she was playing tennis, the scans revealed a spike in activity in the parts of the brain responsible for motor functions. The same was observed in brain scans of healthy volunteers who took part in the experiment. According to Dr. Owen, these results prove that the patient is able to at least hear the speech addressed to her and mentally respond to it.
Thus, the answer to the question of whether it is permissible to euthanize people who have been in a state of coma for a long time becomes even more controversial.
Wonderful return
Some experts advise to "communicate" more with a patient in a coma, talk to him, tell some stories - in their opinion, this enables the comatose to keep in touch with real life and increases the chances of getting him out of a vegetative state.
Cases when people came out of a coma, contrary to the forecasts of doctors, are not at all rare. A resident of the British town of Westonsuper Mare (30 km west of Bristol), brought his wife out of a coma … with the help of abuse!
Yvonne Sullivan had a failed birth. The child died, and she herself received a serious blood poisoning. Upon learning of the death of the baby, the woman fell into an unconscious state and did not come out of it for two weeks.
Finally, the doctors offered to disconnect her from the life support system. Hearing about this, Yvonne Dom's husband became so angry that he grabbed his unconscious wife by the hand and began to shout at her, reproaching her for not wanting to come to her senses. After 2 hours, Yvonne suddenly began to breathe on her own, and after another 5 days, her mind returned. According to the doctors, it was the “bashing” given by the husband that helped.
Alice Lawson, three years old, from the city of Scunthorpe (England), today looks like a completely healthy and cheerful girl. Who would have believed that two years ago she was practically a "plant", and doctors were going to kill a hopeless patient in order to transplant organs to a donor? But at the last moment a miracle happened, and the girl came out of a coma.
At the age of one, Alice suffered from meningitis and stroke with renal failure. She could not breathe on her own, life in her was supported only by equipment. In March, the parents decided to turn off the ventilator and signed a permit to remove their daughter's organs for further transplantation. On the eve of the Lawson's wife spent the whole night at the girl's bed. Alice's mother Jennifer brought her balloons, which the girl adored when she was healthy.
She talked with her daughter, told how all her relatives love her. In the morning, Alice was injected with morphine and disconnected from the apparatus. Jennifer took her in his arms and kissed her. A team of transplantologists was already waiting in the next room. Suddenly, the doctors noticed that the girl … breathes on her own. She was alive!
Of course, the girl did not recover immediately and completely. For some time Alice's reactions were at the level of a nursing baby, she could not even hold her head. In addition, one leg remained shorter than the other, but this can be corrected with an operation. Now the child goes to a correctional kindergarten. She paints and rides a bike that has been redesigned especially for her. Relatives hope that over time, Alice will recover and catch up with the development of her peers.
Ida Shakhovskaya