Would it be possible to artifically keep someone unconcious for an extended period of time, and be able to revive them later on?
Let’s say I wanted to be knocked out like a light and woken up in 2005 (or whenever the next Democrat is inaugurated as President). Would that be possible?
Good question. It seems to me that one of my college professors said that Mario Lanza used to be placed in a state of “suspended animation” for months at a time in order to lose weight for big movie roles.
Wouldn’t your muscles atrophy after awhile?
It’s commonly done with head injuries to allow patients to heal without the stress of waking life. Forexample here is one case.
Sorry I meant to add google for “medically induced coma”
Yep, look at Gray(matterless) Davis, the Governor of California. Come to think about it, I think that was lack of oxygen to the brain, not medically induced. You were asking about a medically induced comas.
Who would feed you, wash you, turn you, exercise you and change all those things below the bed with tubes in them if you did such a thing?
Funny you should mention this because today I was discussing anesthesia with somebody (being knocked out for surgery).
I wondered aloud if someone who was near death from exhaustion could be knocked out (as if they were having surgery) and kept unconscious for a few days until they were rested.
Anyhow, this person was telling me about an article they read about some place in … um … Sweden? Switzerland? Some “S” European country that had a clinic for people who suffered severe migraines. They’d check in and they’d be put under for a few days, apparently the sleep helped the migraine go away.
I don’t know about an extended period of time but you can apparently do it for a bit.
I think I’ve read about medically induced coma also used for burn victims.
James Herriot wrote about a similar thing in his books. He found that sometimes if he gave a sick animal a large but not lethal dose of anesthetic, enough to knock it out for a few days, the rest from the illness (vomiting, diarrhea, pain) was often enough to help the animal recover. I recall two specific anecdotes about a sick ewe and a poodle.
Planning to spend a year dead for tax reasons? (sorry)
Anyway… What exactly is the difference between a medically induced coma and general anesthesia? My impression is that the former represents a more drastic reduction of brain activity, is that correct?
A friend of a friend was having constant seizures and the docs couldn’t figure them out. They put him in a coma so he wouldn’t damage his brain while they cured him.
(This isn’t ‘friend of a friend’ UL. I spoke to the victim’s wife about it.)
A friend of mine was in the hospital for some extensive surgery, and they rather overdid the painkillers, to the point where she started showing symptoms of withdrawal when they were, uh, withdrawn. The docs basically knocked her out for three days to get through all of that, and she was fine from then on…
An associate of mine formerly worked for a company that provided services to the mentally retarded/developmentally disabled.
They had a client who had bad habits. One of these included gnawing the inner part of his own mouth, to the point that it would become infected and cause substantial illness.
They wound up going through a legal procedure, which was not at all easy, that allowed the operators of this company to have an induced coma applied to this individual, in order to avoid the danger that consciousness presented.
Now that job has to suck. That much responsibility for another human being in that pathetic of a situation would wear my soul down, and quick.