Modern-Day Lazarus: Man Regains Full Consciousness After 23 Years in ”Coma”
Posted: Sunday, November 29, 2009
by Joel Kontinen
http://joelkontinen.blogspot.com/
Rom Houben, a 46-year old Belgian man, has a past that few of us could imagine. Twenty-three years ago he was badly injured in a traffic accident that almost killed him. The doctors who examined him diagnosed him as suffering from a persistent vegetative state (PVS).
There seemed to be no hope of recovery for him. "As good as dead" was the view of the people who saw him at the hospital.
Recently, Steven Laureys, who is a PhD neurologist, found out that Houben was not only conscious but could even communicate with others. Mr. Houben says that he previously tried to speak but words just did not come out of his mouth.
According to the Spiegel article, Dr. Laureys, Head of the Coma Science Group at the University of Liege in Belgium, had long suspected that many coma patients are at least occasionally conscious. He heard of Houben's case and decided to examine him.
An MRI scan showed that Mr. Houben's brain was not as badly damaged as the doctors had initially assumed.
Mr. Houben has returned to the land of the living. He has left the hospital and now lives at a nursing home in northern Belgium. Though still confined to a wheelchair, he uses his computer to "speak" with others. He is planning to write a book about his experience.
Among other things, Houben's amazing recovery gives rise to questions about the ethics behind the removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube in 2005. After all, Houben was in a "vegetative state" far longer than Ms. Schiavo.
Sometimes, it seems, miracles do happen.
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Top-level comments on this article: (2 total)You know, Joel, I heard this story on BBC, and I was awestruck. How many others like Houben have had the plug pulled on them these past 23 years - including Ms. Terri Schiavo. And those doctors...they are no gods after all. Uhmmm... How vindicated must Houben's mom feel! Keep us posted on Houben's book; it will be some kind of read. ~mogama~Thanks, Mogama. Yes, it was quite a story.
Only the Lord knows when we should and will come to be with him - we were never supposed to have the switch for life/death in our mortal hands...Thanks Marijo, I do agree.
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