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Have any of you ever been in a coma? If so, what's it like?
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| Lira |
Share your experiences. What did it feel like to be in a coma? Did it feel like anything, or did just some chunk of time disappear from your life? How would you describe it?
Yes, Jenny, you're allowed to share the thoughts and impressions of your patients. |
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| ivofivo |
Lira, are you interested in medicine?
As some of you know, comas can be natural or induced, depending on the diagnosis of the human brain.
Having a major brain surgery often requires a chemical presence, such as a -barbiturate-induced coma. In the simplest words, the coma is the last shield your brain has right after the surgeons crack your skull.
:)
Experiences, from what I've read, alter depending on the state of your central nervous system. A patient, in some cases, could clearly hear and process the dialogue of a person/doctor, while being unconscious. Others might feel the sense of touch, some may randomly convulse or twitch from sever muscle spasms.
Not an experience I would like to come across. Not me. :tongue3 |
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| Esiotrat |
My friend was in a coma for 3 weeks after a motorcycle accident. He said he was unaware of what was going on around him, felt like a lot of time has passed. He had some dreams.. But for the most part it felt like...nothing, or like death he said.
He has since an irrational fear of pasta and raisins for some odd reason. It wasn't even anything he ate before the accident.. :confused: |
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| couch-potato |
| My friend was in a coma for a week or so after a car accident. He doesn't remember a damn thing from essentially that entire month. |
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| Lira |
| quote: | Originally posted by ivofivo
Lira, are you interested in medicine? |
I'm more interested on consciousness and the whole what-it-feels-like-to-be-in-a-coma then the medical aspects of it. |
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| aquila |
| I imagine it would be similar to being under a general anaesthetic. You have knowledge time has passed but that's about it. |
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| Jarvmeister |
I was going to post this - read it this morning....
Sounds like the worst possible nightmare anyone could have. Chilling. |
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| Silky Johnson |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lira
Yes, Jenny, you're allowed to share the thoughts and impressions of your patients. |
The only person I know that was in a coma was from my childhood. And actually, he was just killed in a car accident last month.
I remember him being a totally different person after the coma.
edit: My friend's mom was in a coma, too. But not the kind that one recovers from. :/ |
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| Halcyon+On+On |
I've blacked out for several hours before, following a seizure. It's a very distinct feeling of nothingness, and when you come to, you can tell that time has passed, though you are not sure of just how much.
I would imagine a coma is quite similar, merely dilated exponentially. |
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| woscar |
Facilitated Communication, the method by which Rom Houben is said to communicate now, is pseudoscience that was thoroughly debunked in the 1990s and yet, it's still making headlines in cases like Mr. Houben's.
The Belgian Skeptics (SKEPP) tested Mr. Houben by trying to communicate with him through the FC method and it was proven that while he may be conscious, he is definitely not communicating through FC.
| quote: | Many commentators expressed disbelief, and so did SKEPP, for several reasons, medical and others. The method of facilitated communication (FC) has since long been discredited. Controlled experiments have consistently demonstrated that none other than the facilitator is directing the ‘conversation’. In The Times and Der Spiegel, Dr. Laureys claimed that he had performed controlled experiments, which had convinced him of the reliability of FC. Later he expressed doubts and planned new tests, but by then the news of the miraculous rebirth after 23 years had already circulated the globe. How many new tests are needed and why wait months? Apart from some medical objections, one single observation should have been sufficient to discard the whole story: many of the videos show that the patient is typing with his eyes closed. Nobody can blind-type whole sentences with one finger. If you can, the €10.000 SKEPP-prize will be yours, and perhaps you can also apply for the $ 1.000.000 Randi prize.
At the request of the medical institution where Mr Houben is cared for, on February 4 2010 SKEPP was present as advisor for a planned test of this controversial method of communication, and we also conducted our own tests. From the staff of the institute we learned that during two years all attempts to establish any form of communication with the patient by detecting and coding minute movements of the eyes or any other body part had failed. With FC he now seemed to produce correct words and elaborate sentences. Indeed, his answers to our simple test questions were intelligible and sometimes elaborate, but when the facilitator did not know the questions, his answers were all completely wrong. Most of the time he typed with his eyes closed, but as soon as the keyboard was shielded from the facilitator’s view the typing produced gibberish and halted. There clearly was no communication with the patient, only with the facilitator. We wonder what world-shaking news there would have been to communicate if it hadn't been for the spectacular answers the facilitator produced.
Our intent was to not to test Mr Houben, but to test FC, and once more we demonstrated that the method is a sham. This is not to deny that Mr Houben may have some limited consciousness. If so, how frustrating must it be for him to hear all the bogus messages being produced in his name, without any possibility to protest? After our test we had a long conversation with Dr. Laureys. He insisted that we test more facilitators before drawing conclusions. We declined and advised him to clearly distance himself from the FC scam, which he has done today. Out of respect and to allow them time to discuss the results with the family and the dedicated staff, we agreed on a 2 weeks embargo before making the results of our test public. Of course, not everyone is convinced yet. In a phone conversation today Mr Houben’s mother told us that she still believes in FC, because “sometimes it had produced answers that only her son could have known”. She is convinced that Dr. Laureys will ultimately find a method to communicate with her son. His team is experimenting with other methods. Let's hope her wish comes true.
The international news coverage of this case has given many relatives of coma patients false hope, and the advocates of the illusionary facilitated communication got an undeserved publicity boost. The emotional impact on patients’ families can't be underestimated. The decision to present this case before the international media was premature, to say the least. |
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