So much for those people who say those in comas are better off dead. But wait and see….I’ll betcha they’ll come out and say he was misdiagnosed as being in a coma. Like it matters… As one neurologist said, science caught up to him!
Full article here, bits below.
After he was the victim of an automobile accident, doctors said 23-year-old Rom Houben was in a comatose state and unable to communicate with those around him. Now, 23 years later, the 46-year-old says he felt trapped as he was conscious the entire time and attempted to communicate.
Rom Houben says was conscious the entire time and attempted to communicate.
Houben became paralyzed after the crash but, thanks to advances in medical technology, he is now able to tell the world his thoughts via computer.
“I screamed, but there was nothing to hear,” he told the London Daily Mail newspaper.
“I dreamed myself away,” he said of how he coped with the situation. “All that time I just literally dreamed of a better life. Frustration is too small a word to describe what I felt.”
Although tests at the time showed that he was essentially “extinct,” newer tests conducted just three years ago showed Houben’s brain was functioning normally — and his renewed ability to communicate is something he describes as a “second birth.”
“I shall never forget the day when they discovered what was truly wrong with me – it was my second birth,” he told the paper. “I want to read, talk with my friends via the computer and enjoy my life now that people know I am not dead.”
British neurological expert Dr. Steven Laureys has described Houben’s case in a new paper and said, “Medical advances caught up with him.”
The paper indicates doctors used the internationally accepted Glasgow Coma Scale to assess his eye, verbal and motor responses, but the results were incorrect.
