Using MRI equipment, scientists discovered that this young woman’s brain was able to respond to outside stimuli. They would ask her questions about things like playing tennis or walking through the rooms of her home, and watch areas in her brain light up that seem to correspond to speech processing, motor function and possibly memory? link
In the abstract, this is a fascinating development, and likely it will add to our understanding of how the mind works. Maybe it will even get us a step further along towards helping people with brain injuries recover, but reading it, I can’t help but be overwhelmed with horror for this young woman. On some level, at least, she is aware. How much awareness? We don’t know. What if it is just enough to suffer? Just enough to know that things are going on around her and she is trapped in a solitary confinment of her body, with no way to communicate, interact or do anything? Even if she only has minimal, fleeting awareness, isn’t this unspeakably cruel? How long will they hold her there, in that state, in the hopes that she will improve?
What you’ve described is locked in syndrome. While rare, it does happen, but, doesn’t mean that every one in a persistant vegetative state is locked in.
The thought is horrifying. Medical professionals will often deny it to themselves.
I once cared for a young man who had been shot through the nose. He was the only C-3 quad I’d ever seen live. He did not make eye contact. His eyes wandered slowly, right to left and back continuously. He didn’t follow any commands. When I began caring for him, he had been in ICU for nearly 9 months. His wife was 3 weeks pregnant when he was shot. One night, she brought his newborn son in. When she laid the baby on his arm, tears started rolling down his face.
Even though the family somehow sensed that he was aware, until that moment, I couldn’t see it. After, I couldn’t unsee it.
I can only hope that it will make the “Hurry up and die, already” crowd think twice before advocating euthanasia for those who are unable to speak for themselves.
If I was “locked in” and utterly unable to communicate, then that would be pretty horrifying. On the other hand, it looks to me like this girl may not end up being utterly unable to communicate. Through clever use of brain scans, I bet they could set up a way for her to signal at least “yes” and “no.” I imagine if this happened to me, I’d still have a “will to live.”
First of all, this girl has not been in PVS long enough to write her off, and without some sense of exactly what he brain damage is, comparing her to other cases is simply silly. Second of all, what they found was not necessarily conscious awareness at all. They found that her ears still connected to her recognition centers, not that she had any experience of hearing or volition in the matter.
Money quote:
I think people who are thinking about this issue should really take a journey into some of our hospitals and see for themselves the sheer number of people modern medicine is able to maintain despite horrendous damage to their brains and bodies. For every miracle recovery, there are thousands of people who spend their days hellishly gorked and who never recover: many who ultimately die of horrible infections and bedsores as their bodies seize up, contort and twist in on themselves despite even the best physical therapy. If doctors are ever seemingly too eager to suggest taking someone off life-support, its because they’ve spent their careers seeing horrible outcomes that involve nothing but lingering suffering for all involved culminating in an anti-climatic death. THAT is the medical reality.
C3 denotes the level of spinal cord injury. The level of injury is the point in the spinal cord at which damage has occurred. The levels are determined by counting the nerves from the top of the spine downwards, and these nerves are grouped into four different areas. These are the Cervical, Thoracic, Lumbar and Sacral parts of the spinal cord. Quadriplegia is when a person has a spinal cord injury above the first Thoracic vertebra, or somewhere in the Cervical area.
If you want to know more, here’s a link with more information about the functionality of C1 - C3 quadriplegics.
I’m actually surprised that picunurse had never seen a C3 quadriplegic survive prior to that patient - I know several. But then again, spinal cord injuries vary immensely for each individual, even if the level of injury is the same. My ex was rendered a C3 quadriplegic in a freak skiing accident. He not only lived, he was able to breathe completely unassisted. By contrast, Christopher Reeve was a C2 quadriplegic at the time of his accident and despite being re-evaluated five years later as a C3, he still required the assistance of a ventilator to breathe, but had way more sensation and function in other regards than my ex did.
In followup to Apos’ well-considered remarks, note this from the article:
*"But scientists caution the technology is far from being ready for widespread use, and much larger studies are needed before that occurs.
“It’s an important finding, but it has to be vetted with larger, longitudinal studies of patients using this technology to see what the value is, diagnostically,” said Dr. Joseph Fins, professor of medicine at Weill"*
The practical significance of this experiment may be minimal, significant or absolutely nothing.
I’m sure this report wlll be seized on by people who want to take decision-making out of the hands of the families directly involved.
How about this? Let me come and get you, take you to a hospital and tie you up hand and foot, gag you and give you drugs that will scramble your awareness up so that you can’t communicate in any meaningful way, and let me leave you that way for years and years, with your loved ones coming in to sit with you, sobbing, going broke with your medical bills. And I don’t ever have to let you go. Ever. Is that or isn’t it unspeakably cruel? I’m not trying to kill anyone, but to me the situation would be HELL, pure and unadulterated.
In fact, I was thinking that a Living Will just isn’t good enough. I am considering having ‘If ever I turn into a vegetable, please kill me’ tattooed on my butt.
Big difference between that and a public policy permitting the killing of anyone similarly situated.
As long as your butt tattoo says, “…please kill me,” and not, “…please kill me and anyone else similarly injured,” then we’re OK.
MY tattoo may say something different. And in the absence of a clear directive, such as the butt tattoo system would provide, I dislike choosing to err on your side.
Okay, what would yours say? And in the absence of a clear directive, why is your side preferable? Is it that you have faith in miracles and even though people might be suffering despair, confusion, loneliness and maybe pain, you want them to be held in limbo just in case? Like Apos says, MOST of these cases don’t end well. Who wants to just dwindle away over a period of years?
In my opinion, it is not “unspeakably cruel” to provide basic life support and care to someone in a coma or PVS. I consider the withdrawal of feeding and hydration to be equivalent to murder.
Way to dodge my question. And for the record, I think if we are going to go the euthanasia route, it should be by the same humane methods we use on our pets. I would put those puppies down if I was told that the odds were very good that they would be in that kind of state the rest of their natural lives. Why not? Tell the truth, you wouldn’t do that to a dog, would you?
And see, even that, I’d be begging on the inside to put me out of my misery (which I say as a constantly recurring agoraphobic). The idea that your life can be so reduced, that you can’t even have a moment’s peace ‘away from yourself,’ is enough to ensure my Living Will is in good order.
Well, as one that I guess falls on the same side of the debate that you list above, I feel it is to prevent inner pain and turmoil that we can’t possibly know about. Sometimes inaction makes a too hard decision for us and forces someone else to reap the consequences. I wouldn’t want to take the chance that I was the cause behind their suffering. Regardless, everyone should “think twice” before acting or not.
How horrible would it be to live that way for years? Unable to move or even communicate with your loved ones. You wouldn’t be experiencing life. To me this is the ultimate torture/hell/whatever. If anything it tells me that euthanasia would be the most humane thing for this situation as far as I’m concerned.
I’m in the “Kill Me Now” column. Being aware of my situation would be even worse, but either way, I want no part of that life. Even a faint possibility that I *might someday recover * wouldn’t be enough to endure that for more than a couple months. I want out of that situation.