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Man Assumed in Coma for 23 Year was Fully Conscious

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Apple_in_my_Eye
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23 Nov 2009, 1:35 pm

...until someone put a keyboard (or maybe FC?) in front of him and found out he was only just mostly paralyzed and non-verbal. (Geeze)

'I screamed, but there was nothing to hear': Man trapped in 23-year 'coma' reveals horror of being unable to tell doctors he was conscious

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldne ... along.html



TheMidnightJudge
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23 Nov 2009, 1:47 pm

23 years is longer than I've been alive. He must have hoped every day that someone would find out. Or worse, believed he'd be unable to communicate until he died.


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23 Nov 2009, 3:05 pm

Stuff like this freaks me out. Perhaps if you were mentally and spiritually pure then it wouldn't be too bad but personally the major thing I avoid is time doing nothing because I cannot deal with many of my own thoughts. To spend twenty three years doing that seems highly undesirable.


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Apple_in_my_Eye
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23 Nov 2009, 3:13 pm

Enduring such a situation is amazing and horrifying, though the part I also found shocking was that no one thought to put a keyboard in front of the guy for 23 years! They ought to automatically try that with all the 'comatose' patients. Now he can communicate, do email, post on forums, etc etc.

Reminds me some of how non-verbal autistic people get assumed to be non-intelligent -- until they get a way to communicate, and then everybody is shocked (and shouldn't be -- no one shouldn't have assumed non-verbal = non-intelligent in the first place).



CRD
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23 Nov 2009, 4:25 pm

Apple_in_my_Eye wrote:
Enduring such a situation is amazing and horrifying, though the part I also found shocking was that no one thought to put a keyboard in front of the guy for 23 years! They ought to automatically try that with all the 'comatose' patients. Now he can communicate, do email, post on forums, etc etc.

Reminds me some of how non-verbal autistic people get assumed to be non-intelligent -- until they get a way to communicate, and then everybody is shocked (and shouldn't be -- no one shouldn't have assumed non-verbal = non-intelligent in the first place).

Thankyou, Thankyou , Thankyou! I'm so sick of people treating my son like he's retared because he doesn't speak. Anyone know how to teach a nonverbal kid how to type I've been plowing away at it he can type a few things and is a self taught reader and one know of any good programs or anyone I can contact about this suject and help would be most welcome.



jrknothead
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24 Nov 2009, 1:11 am

Apple_in_my_Eye wrote:
...until someone put a keyboard (or maybe FC?) in front of him and found out he was only just mostly paralyzed and non-verbal. (Geeze)

'I screamed, but there was nothing to hear': Man trapped in 23-year 'coma' reveals horror of being unable to tell doctors he was conscious

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldne ... along.html


"Uh, yes maam... and I'd also like to make a complaint about a certain orderly named Buck..."

(Kill Bill fans will get this... anyone else won't, and that's very proper too)



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06 Dec 2009, 11:51 am

Hey CRD.

If your son likes video games, he might enjoy this website... http://www.freetypinggame.net/

I haven't tried the lessons, but the games are fun, and I think he might teach himself to type by battling spaceships or stopping frogs from breaking their diet!

Before you start the game there is an option to choose which groups of letters you're practising. Let me know if this is any use to you?



anna-banana
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06 Dec 2009, 3:00 pm

actually, he might not be so awake after all:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/11/houben-communication/


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Apple_in_my_Eye
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06 Dec 2009, 4:37 pm

Sounds like Caplan just hates facilitated communication, though. He seems to fail to consider that Houben (the coma guy) first had been set up with a toe-switch device that he operated independently before the FC was tried. And also that the brain scans that show he is actually conscious. Caplan makes out that they just whipped out the FC and a miracle happened, when instead it was like 3 years of doctors trying different things.

http://notdeadyetnewscommentary.blogspo ... nosis.html

Quote:
As to the reliability of the communication in this instance? They tested:

Laureys' team showed Houben an object while his aide was taken outside, and when she came back in he was able to write it down correctly, said Prof. Audren Vandaudenhuyse, a colleague of Laureys.

"So all that has been checked and confirmed, so we are sure it is him who is talking," Vanhaudenhuyse said.


I don't even know much about FC, but Caplan's position doesn't seem as cooly rational as he's making it out to be.



CRD
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06 Dec 2009, 6:28 pm

mgran wrote:
Hey CRD.

If your son likes video games, he might enjoy this website... http://www.freetypinggame.net/

I haven't tried the lessons, but the games are fun, and I think he might teach himself to type by battling spaceships or stopping frogs from breaking their diet!

Before you start the game there is an option to choose which groups of letters you're practising. Let me know if this is any use to you?

Thanks I'll give it a try :)