Did anyone see the Discovery show on brain trauma/comas/vegetative states?

[Bouncy Ball]

My friend Tivo-ed it and I watched it late last night.

One man had no frontal lobes (one of the four lobes of the cerebral cortex). All the rest of his cerebral cortex was there, though one part was shrunken. But the frontal lobes (located right behind your forehead) were gone, replaced with spinal fluid.

Which means he has no short-term memory, his personality has been greatly changed, and he has very little impluse control.

When he had his car accident, he was 19 years old. You cannot convince him he is not still 19 years old. At the time of the accident, his daughter, Amber, was just a baby. He still thinks she's a baby. The now-adult Amber has tried to tell him who she is, but he often thinks she is his wife (who left him a couple of years after the accident and is now living in another state).

They flew him to New Jersey and New York for testing, but he got angry when people told him where he was, because he kept insisting he was still in Arkansas. Why? He couldn't remember the plane ride from just that morning. One of the doctors said "each day just washes over him, brand new, he has no sense of yesterday or tomorrow or thirty minutes ago." (Anyone thinking of the movie "50 First Dates?" But Drew Barrymore's character didn't have a body so atrophied she couldn't even walk around, like this guy's body.)

He sometimes begins speaking in a very sexually explicit way or his language is very aggressive and threatening.

Another man they showed still has all of his brain, but his car accident left a tiny, microscopic nick on his frontal lobe. As a result, he feels no emotion for his wife or young son. He is now verbally abusive towards them and sometimes aggressive as well. He is not physically impaired, he was only unconscious for 10 minutes. But that tiny little nick on his frontal lobes (found on CT scans) completely changed his personality. He feels no concern for others at all. Completely indifferent to everyone around him. He cannot hold a job because of his personality and his inclination to aggression towards others.

Terri Schiavo has no cerebral cortex at all.

From a recent article:

Brain scans show that parts of Schiavo's brain have atrophied and been replaced by spinal fluid. With such severe damage, Schiavo can't show the recovery that Scantlin has, said Dr. Michael Pulley, assistant professor of neurology at the University of Florida College of Medicine in Jacksonville.

"Those types of changes don't reverse," Pulley said. "If you lose big pieces of brain, regardless of what it is - trauma, stroke, surgery - it doesn't come back."

The only documented case of someone recovering from a permanent vegetative state came in the early 1980s, said Dr. Ronald Cranford, a neurology professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School who has examined Schiavo.

And in that case, the patient's scan showed no brain atrophy, Cranford said. "The one thing we learned from that, you look at shrinkage of the brain," he said. "Terri has massive shrinkage."

End snippet.

I watched that Discovery show and thought damn, one of those guys still has ALL of his brain and that little bit of damage means he isn't even the same person, and the other guy is missing one lobe and is stuck in a time warp and has no sense of today AND has a greatly modified personality.

Here's Terri Schiavo, with her cerebral cortex completely missing, and people think she's just going to grow it back? Or just wake up and start talking without one? Without one, your body can do nothing but involuntary things. Your heart can beat, you can breathe, you can regulate your body temperature (sweat, etc), because all those things are things our "lower" brain tells our body to do automatically (you don't will your heart to beat, right?).

Anything beyond that, she is simply completely incapable of doing, lacking any brain tissue to tell her body to do those things. She can't even form a thought. (We don't think with our lower brain.) She has no consciousness.

And shame on the people who have preyed on her parents and made them believe otherwise. Seriously, that's just about criminal. It's like taking the engine out of a car and saying "ANY day now, it's just going to start up and we'll be able to drive it around! If you just pray hard enough. And fight the court system hard enough, and get enough publicity about it. Maybe if we lit some more candles that car with no engine will start and drive around."

Now how crazy is that? I know most DUers understand all these things, but the show I watched last night only verified for me how....out of touch with reality/basic biological facts it is to think someone in her condition could ever re-grow a cerebral cortex or just start speaking and become conscious without one.

And here's an interesting bit of information I found:

"In 2003, a court-appointed guardian for Terri wrote that during the years-long legal struggle, the Schindlers had ''voiced the disturbing belief that they would keep Terri alive at any and all costs," even if that required amputation of her limbs. "As part of the hypothetical presented," the guardian's report stated, "Schindler family members stated that even if Terri had told them of her intention to have artificial nutrition withdrawn, they would not do it.''"

http://www.nndb.com/people/435/000026357/

So the parents would NOT have honored her wishes even IF she had stated them to them.

WTF? And people support that?

Lastly, please, if you don't have a living will and you don't want this to ever happen to you (or your loved ones fighting over it), please get one done. It's not as expensive as you might think to do a quick consultation with an attorney, or in the situation of not having any money to do it, at least type up your wishes, have a family member witness them (with a signature and preferably by your next of kin) and go to the bank and get it NOTARIZED. A couple of copies of it, too. Then place one copy in safekeeping and give another copy to your next of kin.

[amazona]

1. too scary for me

A college acquaintance had an accident and was put into a persistent vegetative state. I already know what it is. He can't ever wake up, can't ever recover, his body is basically just kept on tap as a cash crop for the medical industry. A vegetable indeed.


Another man they showed still has all of his brain, but his car accident left a tiny, microscopic nick on his frontal lobe. As a result, he feels no emotion for his wife or young son. He is now verbally abusive towards them and sometimes aggressive as well. He is not physically impaired, he was only unconscious for 10 minutes. But that tiny little nick on his frontal lobes (found on CT scans) completely changed his personality. He feels no concern for others at all. Completely indifferent to everyone around him. He cannot hold a job because of his personality and his inclination to aggression towards others.


This happened to a man in my town about a decade ago, he had to be placed in an institution. The scary part is that he was OK right after the accident but his frontal lobe swelled over a period of time to the point where he could no longer work or control his aggressions. A terrible thing.

The conservation movement is a breeding ground of communists
and other subversives. We intend to clean them out,
even if it means rounding up every birdwatcher in the country.
--John Mitchell, US Attorney General 1969-72

[Bouncy Ball]

4. That man's wife is extremely unhappy.

Since he is verbally abusive, it is just a matter of time before she has to take their 3 year old son and leave.

It was kind of eerie when he was interviewed. He was like a shell. No emotions. He did laugh, but at completely inappropriate times. Like, he'd mention he has been aggressive to them and he giggled really hard and she just looked upset.

And that's got to be hard, but how can she live the rest of her life loving a man who no longer shows any concern or affection or love for her? Feels nothing for her?

It was really sad....

[amazona]

9. the wife in our town was very sad

She said at first she simply couldn't believe that the old husband wasn't right inside somewhere listening but she also had a child and finally the doctors convinced her of what she had to do for her own safety and the good of the child since the "real" husband could never come back. I don't understand why the swelling never went down in his frontal lobes, but for some reason it never did and they said it couldn't.

The conservation movement is a breeding ground of communists
and other subversives. We intend to clean them out,
even if it means rounding up every birdwatcher in the country.
--John Mitchell, US Attorney General 1969-72

[janx]

2. I missed it, sorry to say. Maybe it will be on again.

Too many people don't know about Terri Schiavo's lack of a cerebral cortex and what that means. The misinformation and religious propaganda attached to this case has worked very well, unfortunately. There were even some doctors the Schindlers convinced to help who were not informed as to the cortex situation.

[Bouncy Ball]

7. Ay-yi-yi.

If I were a doctor, the first thing I'd want to do is an MRI and maybe a CT scan on her to see what I was dealing with. Without knowing that, you're kinda flying in the dark.

The program was very sad overall.

[Gman]

13. Makes me wonder if the Vatican is even aware

of the condition of her brain and if they would maintain their position on Schiavo. I've no doubt that there are some highly connected right wingers that got the Vatican to come out and address the Schiavo issue. So I wonder if the Vatican indeed got all the facts.

[checks-n-balances]

3. I saw that! And I also thought about the FL case

especially when they were saying that these partial "awakenings" can be very misleading. The person may look as thought they are listening (but they aren't) or just because they seem to make eye contact, they really don't see you.

It was fascinating but horribly sad at the same time.

[Bouncy Ball]

5. Yeah, we can involuntarily open our eyes

and many people do partially open their eyes even when they are asleep. I've seen people asleep who LOOK as if they are awake, because their eyes are open! (My daughter and stepfather have done this.)

We even can grimace, smile, etc on an involuntary basis. Newborns have no idea what a smile is and they have not "learned" to smile in respond to a smiling face, as they do later on, but they have been seen many times "smiling." It's involuntary.

It's all a matter of voluntary vs. involuntary actions. She cannot possibly carry out any voluntary actions.

[janx]

8. Right. And that's what makes the Schiavo case so sad.

People try to interpret the involuntary and reflexive as something meaningful and voluntary. All of the video clips are indications of that.

Our normal, human reaction is to believe the best, to interpret things the way we'd like to see them. So it works very well.

[soothsayer]

6. Memento.

[Warpy]

10. I worked in a traumatic brain injury unit at a VA hospital

and typically saw people from the time they were weaned off mechanical ventilation until they were either rehabbed and discharged, or were warehoused untl they became moribund and sent to a nursing home for their last 6 months or so. Patients who had been through rehab and discharged would come back periodically for reassessment.

Comatose patients can reawaken after months or years. However, after they've been comatose for more than three weeks or so, the recovery is not a complete one. Most are severely impaired and require the full time attention of a spouse or other caregiver. Joints develop contractures, muscles atrophy, and the higher brain functions are generally severely affected.

Patients in persistent vegetative states are not comatose. They are fully awake, but their higher brain functions have been obliterated with the severity of their injury. Movements and facial expressions are random, and it's often an uphill battle to convince a family member that a fleeting smile is not evidence of love any more than a fleeting frown is evidence of anger. I've never seen any recovery in a PVS patient, not even a partial one. I have seen comatose patients misidentified as PVS patients, though, and awakening has occurred with these comatose people within a month or two. Schiavo is not comatose, however. She's fully awake.

While I initially had a little sympathy for parents who didn't want to outlive a child, their subsequent actions have ended it. Any parent who would keep a child's corpse with 4 amputated limbs connected to life support indefinitely has another motive besides love or hope.

[Bouncy Ball]

11. And who admit they would not follow her wishes

even if she had told them to her parents.

I was speechless when I read that.

[Judi Lynn]

12. A right-wing show host, I think "Glen Beck" or something similar

was on a talk radio station I heard trying to take a shower. He was talking to Terri's sister on the phone: told her that he wondered what would happen if _{George Bush} went to Florida and took that mean old judge out alone and put the fear of God into him, in a one to one stern talking-to. He fantisized the conversation _Bush would have with that mean old judge to get him to rescind the "no food" order. He poured out his fury at some supposed "librul" judge who would DARE remove feeding from this woman's unconscious form.

He encouraged Terri's sister to elaborate that Terri, indeed, does respond to things they tell her, and you can perceive her old sense of humor is still there, and that she's so up the creek only because her husband hasn't allowed any therapy for so long, etc., etc.

Glen told her he believes that God will touch the heart of the judge, and move him to change his position, or there will be a MIRACLE and this will not turn out badly.

All this time the show host attempted to deepen the feeling of powerlessness and rage among his audience. I can't imagine how anyone could stand to listen to this utter @$$ for longer than the time it takes to get out of the shower and turn off the radio!

Thanks for the information about what consciousness is actually possible in someone's case who has sustained this kind of damage.
Very helpful.

[Lady Effingbroke]

15. Glen Beck is a right-wing tool!

He is a total maroon.

On edit: I know, because I used to work at a place that played the local Right Wing Hate Radio station from open to close, and his show was on from 9 to 11 a.m.

[Lady Effingbroke]

14. I saw that show a while back - Discovery channels re-run shows quite

a bit.

The difference between the two men in the show and Terri Schiavo is that they had some semblance of a cerebral cortex, however altered or damaged, which made recovery to their present level of functioning possible.

Terri Schiavo has NO cerebral cortex. What body functions she does display are autonomic reflexes controlled only by her brain stem.

THEREFORE:

NO cerebral cortex = NO recovery.

After watching this poor woman get punted around like the political football she has sadly become, I am definitely making a living will.

[Bouncy Ball]

16. Yep. You can't treat what isn't there.

[China_cat]

17. Randall Terry and Operation Rescue

are bankrolling and backing the parents.

Living wills are good but ONLY if your family agrees to honor it. Even if Terri had her wishes written down, her family could have overturned it. Unfortunately, that's the way it works.

And, even if you have a living will with a dnr clause and your family agrees to honor it, check with your local EMS to see what their legal obligation is. Here it is to make every effort to revive, no matter what. People working with hospice are advised of this and given alternative ambulance services that are private and not subject to the state law.

So make sure you check everything. And when you think you've covered it all, contact a hospice organization to see if there's anything you've forgotten and any way to make it more certain that your wishes are observed.

[Withywindle]

18. That's my biggest nightmare!

Being trapped in a state like that - Terri's or something similar. Atrophied body, destroyed mind, unable to do anything....but being, in some form, awake! With some kind of very limited animal consciousness that can't possibly understand why I'm being tortured this way. There are things much, much worse than death!

What does God have to do with this? This is all about power and control and denial and technology. (I don't understand why people who profess Christianity fear death so much. Why are they fighting so hard to keep Terri out of heaven?)