Aug. 31, 2008
Awakenings: Return To Life
Some Minimally Conscious People Are Actually Re-Awakening Thanks To Drug Therapies
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Medical Awakenings
Minimally conscious people (immobile but not in a vegetative state) are being re-evaluated for degrees of consciousness many thought they never had. CNN's Anderson Cooper reports for "60 Minutes."
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Three years ago, Terri Schiavo sparked a nationwide debate when she was removed from a feeding tube. Schiavo was in a permanent vegetative state with no chance of recovery. But there are as many as 300,000 other Americans who have survived brain injuries, only to be trapped in what's called a "minimally conscious state." They can't talk, walk, or eat, but they retain more mental awareness than vegetative patients.
For decades now, minimally conscious people have been all but written off by the medical establishment, warehoused in nursing homes, with little hope of recovery. But as CNN's Anderson Cooper first reported last fall, incredible new discoveries are changing the way doctors view these people.
It turns out some may have been misdiagnosed and may be more aware than previously thought. What's even more surprising is that after receiving the popular sleeping pill Ambien, some minimally conscious people are actually waking up.
Don Herbert was a firefighter in Buffalo, N.Y. On Dec. 29, 1995, he was battling a house fire when the building's roof collapsed. Don was trapped under a pile of debris and nearly suffocated. A local news camera captured firefighters pulling Don from an attic window. By the time his wife Linda and four sons reached the hospital, Don was already in a coma.
"I remember pleading and begging with him in the hospital when he was unresponsive just, 'Don't leave me, don't leave the kids, you know. We need you, you know. We need you,'" Linda Herbert recalls.
"You'd try to get him to squeeze your hand or move a toe, or something like that it’s just, we were looking for just about anything," Don and Linda's son, Don Jr. remembers.
Don Herbert did regain consciousness, but a few months later slipped into a minimally conscious state. He could respond to some stimuli but was unable to communicate. Moved to a nursing home, he was kept alive by a feeding tube.
"I took him to one neurologist. And I was basically begging him, you know, to tell me, 'Is he gonna get better, or isn’t he?'" Linda remembers. "And he just sort of said, 'Well, look at him. What do you see? You see what I see, there’s nothing there.' And I was just devastated."
While Don languished in the nursing home, years passed and his four boys grew into men. Determined to keep their father in their lives, Linda brought Don to birthdays and holidays, but says he sat slumped in his wheelchair, unaware of his surroundings.
What was it like for the sons to see their father in this state?
"You'd think after ten years of seeing him hooked up to feeding tubes and different machines that you’d sort of get used to it or something. But here, I really never did," Don Jr. explains.
"Yeah. It made me sick to my stomach to go every, you know. I didn’t go that often 'cause I just couldn’t stand seeing him like that," Tom says.
Then one day, two years ago, the nursing home called with shocking news: Don had woken up and was asking for his family.
One of the nurses lent the Herberts a video camera to record Don's incredible awakening. His first words were a struggle -- he hadn’t spoken in nearly a decade.
Family members and buddies from the firehouse rushed to Don's room. Blinded in the accident, Don recognized everyone by their voice -- everyone that is, except his youngest son Nick, who was just four when his dad was injured.
"Did he understand who you were?" Cooper asks Nick.
"He still thought that I was real young. And he went to -- like, put his hand out over me and to see, like, how tall I was," Nick says. "We just kept telling him to raise his hand higher, 'cause he was trying to feel for me down low."
"When he learns that he has been gone for ten years, he seems heartsick about it," Cooper remarks. "The sadness is palpable."
"He felt so bad," Linda says. "He thought, like, he abandoned us. He felt so bad that he wasn't there for the boys."
Don Herbert's reunion with his family was brief. While trying to get out of bed, he fell and suffered another brain injury. He later contracted pneumonia, and less than a year after he woke up, Don Herbert died.
Produced By Denise Cetta
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See all 80 CommentsMy concern is that anyone would use this info as an excuse to allow their loved one to be kept alive by the health care system in order to wait for a ''cure''. We are YEARS away from such a thing...
Pediatric Critical Care Specialist
Ohio, USA
Although the story''s premise was not on head injuries, both of the patients in the story had suffered a form of the injury. There are thousands of head injuries that occur weekly either through car, sporting, job-related and elderly accidents. Many individuals don''t make it through the terrifying parts of a head injury while others do.The healing process is owed in great part to medicine but I know that a great part of the process is also mindpower.
This was April and by June I took my first steps. After that my life changed.
Ten years later I live on my own although I still can''t do somethings for myself and haven''t spoken since then and never may that''s up to God.
I take Ambin to help me sleep and there''s some nights it doesn''t help.
Doctors are not God and should not tell people what will not be, because in all in they don''t know what could happen.
It is frightening to think that someone could be literally trapped inside their body with virtually no way to communicate with the outside world for years at a time. Hopefully the results of these new drug therapies will force the medical community to take a closer look at those who would have been or have been previously misdiagnosed as being in a vegetative state. It will be interesting to see if cost will have any bearing on whether or not someone is reevaluated.
If these treatments can be administered in the early stages of an accident maybe they can prevent or lessen the severity of these types of injuries.
These cases are truly remarkable.
This should have been stressed in the news segment lest we end up giving false hopes to families.
N Sethi
New York, NY
Joe Isserles and Maria Polizzi
Davenport, Fl
I truely resent the words spoken by Pediatric Critical Care Specialist from Ohio USA. My daughter is a severely brain injured girl living her life in a geriatric nursing home. This was not my dream for my child, rather this is my nightmare.We are not looking for an "excuse" to keep our loved ones alive by the health care system. We are looking for answers, research, cures, etc for our loves ones, much like the hope and research for cures for cancer, strokes, spinal cord injury, etc.
Please rethink, just why are you in the health care profession? Are you God to decide which of your patients should be kept alive by the healthcare system?
Perhaps you could encourage research for TBI in your field of work, instead of thinking these injuried patients are a burden on our health care system.
Shame on you! I would hope my loved one is never your patient.
P.S. I, also, am also in the healthcare field, and all my patients are deserving of equal health care services.
I am optimistic for all those who could be candidates for such therapy, but devastated I did not know about this treamtment to persue it as a possibility for my sister.
I am having a very difficult time with this under the circumstances, and would appreciate any input that you may have in regards to this treatment, or general thoughts, for that matter.
john@jpsomers.com
David
David
But on the other hand...I think it''s wrong to keep your loved ones alive by artificial means for years and years just waiting for a cure or just because you want them to continue to live.
Put yourself in their shoes...would you want that kind of life? Waiting to be turned every two hours to prevent bed sores, diapered, washed, fed thru a tube, maybe even breathing on a vent? I am a patient advocate and I am not saying this for financial reasons.
Posters: it is important to decide and discuss your "Living Will" when you are still healthy and young and then hope your family follows your wishes in the event something happens to you.
My best wishes to all the posters who have ill loved ones.
He has "Hydocheplus". He lived a normal life until
Dec 2002 (13 at the time), his shunt malfunction, then develop into 4 strokes which left him total disable. he can not walk or talk and has a feeding tube. After the first 2 to 3 months he regain his verbal skills which the doctors could not believe.
Then he suffer a massive seizure which the doctor had
to put his brain in a semi-coma state. Once out the
semi-coma state he has never spoken another word, that''s been almost 5 years. How would I get in touch
with Dr. Schiff and get more info on "Ambien"?
saulharris3@yahoo.com/
THANK YOU!!!
Posted by MCVet
MCVet, OMG, Which religious affiliation did this? What was their angle? Please explain!!!
Someone please explain to me which horrible religious sect tried to make money from Teri''s case, and worse yet, is trying to protect people in this vegetative state!! We need to know so we can all protect ourselves from the dreaded Christains. (If it was them)
For 13 yrs I was his mother and care provider. My mother was with me, and still is, helping me to take care of him -- only now he is living in a nursing home where he can get care around the clock.
I gave up believing that my son would ever throw a ball or hold his own spoon or even whisper my name - or even acknowledge my presence -- I accepted everything about him, even now.
Thank you for airing that story because even in the face of hopelessness and frustration -- my soul was made full and restored by the hopes of those that were able to see their babies eyes affixed upon them -- if only for a while. I would give my very life to hear my son whisper my name -- my life. But, if that never happens -- after seeing what other people have experienced I will rest in knowing that someone has enjoyed that privilege -- even if it''s not me.
Thank you and God bless.
Tashana in Columbus, OH.
Ambien works only where the damage to the brain is electrical. When the damage is structural (as in the child with the cut brain stem or the young man with the blood-starved brain areas from repeated strokes,) Ambien does not work.
For the poor lady whose child has a sheared brain stem: depending on what other damage happened, your child may, in fact, have higher brain function but without the physical connection between the brain and the body that is the brain stem, there is no way to express those functions. While the eyes directly link into the brain, the muscles that operate them do not. Keep talking to your child, keep stimulating your child through vision, sound and taste but realize that there is no way for your child to respond. Providing the stimulation will help reduce the boredom of being trapped in your head (possibly quite literally in this child''s case.)
So, if anyone can please has any information concerning this doctor please send to rocmax1956@optonline.net
God bless you
My mother, five years ago was in a car accident and had a TBI- she is still in a minimally conscious state, but still smiles at my Dad''s silliness, and when she hears and sees friends and family she has not seen for awhile. She also tracks with her eyes and will lokk right at us when we talk to her occassionally. She lives at home, where my Dad, me and my three sisters, and her friends help care for her.
As far as those that discourage keeping people like my Mom alive- sorry to hear feel that way. I could not disagree more and don''t believe you can really say that you can speak for all situacions especially when you have never first hand seen the hope in the situacions- it is there if you look for it.
For those that know the experience first hand- there is hope, you don''t always find it in the places were you think it may be.
Our family will try the ambien and getting in touch with different doctors, but do not place all of our hope in that alone.
Good luck to all of those trying it. It is good to know there are others who know what my family has and does go through. Thank you 60 minutes for the enlightening perspective and information.
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