Woman wakes up & is talking after 20 years in a coma

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Specializes in Critical Care.

I agree with Tweety but let me go further:

I HATE these stories. Why?

My first job, I was 24 and taking care of a girl my age in a nursing home that was in a car accident when she was 17 with TBI and, to use the lay word, in a coma.

Everytime some story like this came up, it would give her parents new, and in my opinion, false hope. There are 5 stages of grief and denial is at the top. These parents couldn't get past denial and these types of stories allowed them to remain in denial. And that prevented them from coming to terms with their daughter's situation so that they could 'let go' (let me add that while she was in a persistent vegitative state, it was the periodic antibiotics for UTIs, etc, that kept her alive).

For every 'miracle', there are thousands of non-miracles. The odds of the miracle aren't worth the cost to those that must suffer (and like the poster with the TBI above, if someone can't communicate with you, then you have no idea how much they suffer).

The problem with this 'miracle' is that, even if you wait month by month, year by year for it to happen, if it does happen, this person is, as tweety said, a talking head without a functioning body. I love 'the Dead Zone' on TV, but I'm saavy enough to know that somebody in a 'coma' for 6 yrs isn't going to be up and walking by episode 2.

~faith,

Timothy.

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Specializes in Specializes in L/D, newborn, GYN, LTC, Dialysis.

astounding. just when you think life can't get more weird.....

it sure does.

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I guess I'm not saavy enough to know alot of things that most other people know. What I do know is that it is not up to me to decide when a person life is worth living. I think all life is worth living because I believe the purpose is not determined in the here and now. I believe that we all have our lessons to learn and our tasks to do and I believe that in order to carry out some of those tasks sometimes we are in a condition that may appear other than "whole". We cannot help but to think of things from our limited understanding of life, the universe, higher powers and such. I suggest that there is more than is in our realm of understanding and to put the conditions of our limited knowledge on what may totally out of our ability to grasp can only be avoided by FAITH. That is how you sign your posts Timothy, and believe me, I am not attempting to discredit what you feel or any one else. I am just suggesting that we can't always see the big picture in alot of cases and we might have faith that there is more at work here than we know. That's all I'll say on this subject because I have no more knowledge than anyone does, I just have faith.

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Specializes in Critical Care.
I guess I'm not saavy enough to know alot of things that most other people know. What I do know is that it is not up to me to decide when a person life is worth living. I think all life is worth living because I believe the purpose is not determined in the here and now. I believe that we all have our lessons to learn and our tasks to do and I believe that in order to carry out some of those tasks sometimes we are in a condition that may appear other than "whole". We cannot help but to think of things from our limited understanding of life, the universe, higher powers and such. I suggest that there is more than is in our realm of understanding and to put the conditions of our limited knowledge on what may totally out of our ability to grasp can only be avoided by FAITH. That is how you sign your posts Timothy, and believe me, I am not attempting to discredit what you feel or any one else. I am just suggesting that we can't always see the big picture in alot of cases and we might have faith that there is more at work here than we know. That's all I'll say on this subject because I have no more knowledge than anyone does, I just have faith.

I'm a huge believer in faith. I think faith is why we are here and why we are intelligent. The thing that sets us different, the spark, the soul, is our capacity to find and search for faith.

Our intelligence has given us the capacity to do amazing things. But just because we CAN do something doesn't mean we SHOULD. And there are worse fates than death: I've seen them and see them working in critical care.

Making a decision not to subject someone to a fate worse than death is not a lack of faith: it is an embracing of faith, 'the day of a man's death is greater than his birth'.

You can make the moral argument that all life is worth living. But, when we are making those decisions through heroic efforts when nature (God) would have otherwise acted differently, then how much of that is being faithful and how much of that is interference. Remember, God allows us a free will, and with it the ability to interfere. . .

I'm not a preachy type and so quoting scripture is unusual for me (and many of you may not be familiar with this scripture, because it's from the so-called gnostic scriptures): from 'The Concept of the Greater Power':

'And they all have become as reflections in His light. They all have shone, and they have found rest in His rest. And He will release the souls that are punished, and they will come to be in purity. And they will see the saints and cry out to them, "Have mercy on me, O Power who art above all powers." . . . But we have acted according to our birth of the flesh, in the creation . . .which gives law. We also have come to be in the unchangeable aeon (eternity).'

We acted according to our birth and now we cry out 'Have mercy' so that we might find rest in the unchangeable. I personally think that's a fairly powerful demonstration of faith.

~FAITH,

Timothy.

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Specializes in Critical Care.

Sorry, I was being on the direct topic but not the direction of the thread, which was the 'miracle' of waking up.

I didn't mean to be a thread-killer.

Bad, Timothy.

~faith,

Timothy.

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Specializes in Med-Surg.
It's just that she knew that I must have been in some pain because in the accident, my right humerus was absolutely shattered. They had to wait to fix it until the brain swelling went down - they had to evacuate a very large subdural hematoma and there were some complications from that.

I had met on of the fellows who worked with me immediately following the accident. He told me that he did not expect me to ever walk and talk again. He told me this after I walked into his office on my own accord. :)

Yours is an amazing story.

I've seen literally many of cases where I've taken care of comatose patients, or severe brain injured patients and sent them to rehab or to a nursing home and have them come back a year later walking and talking and making sense. It's so rewarding. We have a 19 year old up on rehab whose girlfriend was pregnant when he was head injured. For months he lay on our unit trached and unresponse. Now he's in a wheelchair, walking some, totally alert and comes back and sees us often. It's amazing. He doesn't remember us though.

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Specializes in Med-Surg.
I don't believe that you are plucked from your life at age 18 and in a coma for 20 years by chance or bad luck. I would venture to say that there are HUGE reasons for this to have happened and for her to have been the one it happened to. I'll bet she has valuable info for the rest of us that don't have to be her, but how very spectatular to be her. Time will tell.

I certainly didn't mean to get into a quality of life discussion.

You're are certainly allowed to have your beliefs and your opinion, so please allow me to express mine.

It's just too much to complicate that a higher purpose caused her to be plucked from life at the age of 18 and remain in a coma for 20 years. I just can't believe in that. I don't buy into the life paradigm that "everything happens for a reason".

Can we learn from everything, can good be found in everything. Are there things about the universe we don't understand? Absolutely! Did God or a higher being say "hmmmm.....I'll strike this girl down and put her in a coma for 20 years.........hmmmm..........I'll cause this person to make a mistake in this airplane and kill all 300 people aboard.....there's a reason but I'm not going to let the humans know." I don't think so.

Please feel free to continue to post your beliefs as I'm very respectful of them. But this is how I feel.

Thanks for listening.

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Specializes in Med-Surg.
The thing is you wouldn't care. you wouldn't be the same person you are now, I think. You can't say what you would want in that situation because it is so different from anything you've experienced, I assume.

Yes and no. As it stands now I could say with assurance I wouldn't want to be in a coma for 20 years and wake up a quad. But who knows what her future functioning will be, I don't know. But no, I wouldn't want to be her.

Yes, if I were her, it would be nice not to care or have feelings of longing for the life I once had. I would make the best of whatever life offers me I'd like to think. I could be hit by a car tomorrow and be a quadraplegic and I would strive for the best quality of life I could have. But I can say with assurance I wouldn't want that to happen.

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Specializes in Med-Surg.
I guess I'm not saavy enough to know alot of things that most other people know. What I do know is that it is not up to me to decide when a person life is worth living.

Again, you're entitled to you feelings. I wasn't implying a judgement on whether she should live or die.

I see Timothy's point completely. Someone with a loved one in a coma is going to read this and get false hope.

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Specializes in Med-Surg.
That's an amazing story.

Speaking as someone who has had a TBI and in a coma for a week, be careful what you say. I remember the ICU docs discussing my prognosis with my family. I'd showed them! 10% chance of survival much less gain back anything useful my foot!!

Since I experienced expressive aphasia after my injury, the nurses assumed that sincce I wasn't making sense, that I possibly couldn't understand. You know what it's like to be asking something for pain, have a nurse look you in the eye and say, "I can't understand a thing you're saying", then proceed to walk out of the room? :angryfire

I know that I did a lot of cussing during my ICU stay, but it was in aphasic so no one understood it anyhow. :p

Could you share some things that might be helpful to those of us who are doing patient care for someone who is in the same condition? What are some ways to communicate? What are some things that you learned from your experience? We deal with a lot of stroke victims on the floor and I am really interested in learning more about how to help.

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I don't believe that a 'higher purpose' caused that accident to happen........we are blessed with our own 'free will'. I believe that a horrible accident happened and God's grace has smiled on this family.

Just think of what we can learn from this precious lady. It proves that even though she was in a coma for all those years, she was still able to hear and process information/activites around her.

Proof that we are to maintain that professional attitude when caring for a patient regardless of their condition!

BabyRN2be........What a miracle you are and I'm so sad to hear that you didn't recieve the care you so deserved! How sad that a fellow nurse didn't utilize her skills and properly assess you for your needs.

I have a current patient that is aphasic. He speaks 'wonders' with his eyes and it only takes 'common sense' to know when a patient is in pain.....verbal or not.

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Specializes in pure and simple psych.

One wonders how much good nursing care, ie ROM q shift, splints on at NOC, etc, would have improved her current prognosis. Perhaps we should always presume that patients will recover.

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