Rom Houben of London, England was involved in a terrible car accident at the age of 23, in 1983. This left him fully paralyzed and believed to be in a vegetable state, meaning that the person go in and out of sleeping and waking cycles, but does not respond to anything around them. It is now believed that he has been in a conscious stage the whole time. Being able to communicate by computer, Rom now says that he was able to hear and feel the things everyone said around him since the beginning of his accident. He said it got lonely but he knew his family was by his side the whole time. This misdiagnosis is believed to have happened due to the lack of technology in the field of medicine in the 1980's. It is believe that 41% of all diagnosis of the vegetable state were actually in the comba state.
I do not know how I could live this way. Knowing that I was in a car accident and fully understanding what is happening around me, but not being able to tell the others around me how I felt or thought. Being trapped in my body would feel more like being trapped in a prison. This man has sat like this for 26 years. Not only is this a HUGE mistake, but think of what he had to go through. All the doctor reports and people around him talking to him like he was a mummy, only though he could understand and not talk back. This new type of technology that he uses to type what he is thinking will come into use. If somehow he can get some movement back into his brain, I think that he will be better off and could potentially adapt back into living in this world. Misconceptions are bad, but living through them is good.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/11/24/coma.man.belgium/index.html?eref=rss_topstories&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_topstories+%28RSS%3A+Top+Stories%29
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