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#3724 -
Tuesday, November 24, 2009 - Editor: Jerry Katz
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
“I was
only my consciousness and nothing else”.
Trapped in his own body for 23 years – the coma victim who
screamed unheard
from
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/23/man-trapped-coma-23-years
November 24, 2009
Trapped in his own body for 23 years – the coma
victim who screamed unheard
• Misdiagnosed man’s tale of rebirth thanks to doctor
• Total paralysis masked fully functioning brain
* Kate Connolly in Berlin
* guardian.co.uk, Monday 23 November 2009 13.13 GMT
For 23 years Rom Houben was imprisoned in his own body. He saw
his doctors and nurses as they visited him during their daily
rounds; he listened to the conversations of his carers; he heard
his mother deliver the news to him that his father had died. But
he could do nothing. He was unable to communicate with his
doctors or family. He could not move his head or weep, he could
only listen.
Doctors presumed he was in a vegetative state following a
near-fatal car crash in 1983. They believed he could feel nothing
and hear nothing. For 23 years.
Then a neurologist, Steven Laureys, who decided to take a radical
look at the state of diagnosed coma patients, released him from
his torture. Using a state-of-the-art scanning system, Laureys
found to his amazement that his brain was functioning almost
normally.
“I had dreamed myself away,” said Houben, now 46, whose
real “state” was discovered three years ago, according
to a report in the German magazine Der Spiegel this week.
Laureys, a neurologist at the University of Liege in Belgium,
published a study in BMC Neurology earlier this year saying
Houben could be one of many cases of falsely diagnosed comas
around the world. He discovered that although Houben was
completely paralysed, he was also completely conscious — it
was just that he was unable to communicate the fact.
Houben now communicates with one finger and a special touchscreen
on his wheelchair – he has developed some movement with the
help of intense physiotherapy over the last three years.
He realised when he came round after his accident, which had
caused his heart to stop and his brain to be starved of oxygen
for several minutes, that his body was paralysed. Although he
could hear every word his doctors spoke, he could not communicate
with them.
“I screamed, but there was nothing to hear,” he said,
via his keyboard.
The Belgian former engineering student, who speaks four
languages, said he coped with being effectively trapped in his
own body by meditating. He told doctors he had “travelled
with my thoughts into the past, or into another existence
altogether”. Sometimes, he said, “I was only my
consciousness and nothing else”.
The moment it was discovered he was not in a vegetative state,
said Houben, was like being born again. “I’ll never
forget the day that they discovered me,” he said. “It
was my second birth”.
Experts say Laureys’ findings are likely to reopen the
debate over when the decision should be made to terminate the
lives of those in comas who appear to be unconscious but may have
almost fully-functioning brains.
Belgian doctors used an internationally-accepted scale to monitor
Houben’s state over the years. Known as the Glasgow Coma
Scale, it requires assessment of the eyes, verbal and motor
responses. But they failed to assess him correctly and missed
signs that his brain was still functioning.
Last night his mother, Fina, said in an interview with Belgian
RTBF that they had taken him to the US five times for
reexamination. The breakthrough came when it became clear that
Houben could indicate yes and no with his foot.
“Powerlessness. Utter powerlessness. At first I was angry,
then I learned to live with it,” he tapped out on to the
screen during an interview with the Belgian network last night,
AP reported.
Laureys, who is head of the Coma Science Group and department of
neurology at Liege University hospital, has advised on several
prominent coma cases, such as the American Terri Schiavo, whose
life support was withdrawn in 2005 after 15 years in a coma.
Laureys concluded that coma patients are misdiagnosed “on a
disturbingly regular basis”. He examined 44 patients
believed to be in a vegetative state, and found that 18 of them
responded to communication.
“Once someone is labelled as being without consciousness, it
is very hard to get rid of that,” he told Der Spiegel.
He said patients suspected of being in a non-reversible coma
should be “tested 10 times” and that comas, like sleep,
have different stages and need to be monitored.
Houben hopes to write a book detailing his trauma and his
“rebirth”.