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Some people who appear to be in a coma may be conscious
- DocJade 4y agoRelevant: https://youtu.be/LTikuFFr7JA https://youtu.be/LTikuFFr7JA It genuinely terrifies me that this could happen to anyone in a moments notice
- petilon 4y agoThis story is just as amazing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPHxlXb64EQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPHxlXb64EQ
- SanjayMehta 4y agoThere are some things which are worse than death and this is one of them.
- rumpelstinkin 4y agoanything is worse than death as the dead don't suffer, by all currently available evidence. but yeah, this one is definitely the absolute worse thing that could happen to someone, and let's not forget it is entirely man-made, given that fully paralyzed people are being forcefully kept alive by some f*cking sadist of a pro-lifer...
- pbhjpbhj 4y agoSo you'd rather be mercilessly tortured than to die? It's quite the opposite for me.
- ChrisClark 4y agoRead his comment again, he agrees with you.
- pbhjpbhj 4y agoMaybe. I think you're right, I misread it. However, "anything is worse than death" seems like an ironic hyperbole; "cake or death?" he chooses death because cake is worse?
- ChoGGi 4y agoThat's my nightmare fuel.
- elil17 4y agoI heard about one person who was stuck watching Barney reruns for a decade while he was locked into a coma.
- guerrilla 4y agoThat's locked-in syndrome, "psuedocoma", not coma[1]. It was 12 years[2]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked-in_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked-in_syndrome 2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/01/13/meet-the-man-who-spent-12-years-trapped-inside-his-body-watching-barney-reruns/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2...
- laichzeit0 4y agoAnd having to sit on his own balls for hours because he got put down in his wheelchair like that. That killed me.
- tsol 4y agoThat's like torture. That's awful.
- agumonkey 4y agoIn this era we might have a chance of medtech trying to bridge the gap and communicate.
- seanhunter 4y agoA schoolfriend was in a coma for a while after a sports injury[1]. He told us how his parents brought a bottle of lucozade for him to have if he woke up and after they left he heard staff discussing how since he was never going to wake up they would just drink it themselves. [1] Rugby scrum collapse
- GolfPopper 4y agoDuring WWII, my grandfather survived a mortar shell fragment through his skull, leaving him completely paralyzed and blind. He recounted being able to clearly hear the conversations of the doctors and nurses caring for him, and credited his desire to prove them wrong about him being comatose for his eventual recovery. After several months, he was able to move, and eventually regained sight, speech, and most of his mobility. (He lived well into his 70s - long outlasting the physician who diagnosed him, as he would mention on the rare occasions when he discussed his injuries.)
- eitland 4y agoIn military they told us to never ever talk in a hopeless way near wounded even if we thought they were completely unconscious. Usually the hearing is the last sense to go they thought us, and if we said "he'll never make it" it could be the straw that broke the camels back for someone who is fighting the battle of their life. I don't know enough to know if this is true or not but I think it is a good idea anyway.
- bombcar 4y agoIt is a very good rule and we shouldn’t leave it only for the apparently unconscious! Hope is a powerful thing and being a naysayer can have a bigger effect than we think (even on us).
- thaumasiotes 4y ago> It is a very good rule This is a funny response to >>> He recounted being able to clearly hear the conversations of the doctors and nurses caring for him, and credited his desire to prove them wrong about him being comatose for his eventual recovery. Different people react to different things in different ways.
- oneoff786 4y agoIt doesn’t really go into the patients’ accounts of what happens. Were they conscious or not? It’s not obvious that they were by merely passing this covert consciousness test
- lazyasciiart 4y agoIt does. > to date patients with covert consciousness who recovered the ability to communicate and were interviewed later did not remember the experience of being covertly conscious. Mazurkevich, for instance, does not recall any aspect of her time in the intensive care unit when she appeared to be comatose
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- barbariangrunge 4y agoAs a horror writer, I can’t help but wonder what sorts of stories this leads to, and what you might get wrong while writing about it… By conscious, do they mean “aware”, or do they also mean “actively thinking about what they are experiencing” ? How often do they come out of it? Do they have clear memories of it?
- lazyasciiart 4y agoThey mean “shows brain activity that appears to be specifically triggered by the semantic content of outside input”. Not even aware, necessarily - that level of response can be shown while asleep, for example. And it says that patients have never remembered this, to date.
- js2 4y agoThis one terrified me as a kid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coma_(1978_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coma_(1978_film) This kind of thing could never happen, right? https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/serial-infector-gets-39-years-for-hepatitis-c-outbreak1 https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/serial-infector-gets-39-yea... https://www.cbsnews.com/news/army-nurse-suspected-of-hepatitis-spread/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/army-nurse-suspected-of-hepatit... https://www.cbsnews.com/news/washington-nurse-linked-to-hepatitis-c-scare-loses-state-license/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/washington-nurse-linked-to-hepa...
- tsol 4y agoPeople have been through it and later recovered enough functionality to write books about their experience. Surprisingly, they report feeling pretty normal and even hopeful for the most part. Most people, when hearing about this, imagine it'd be all feelings of terror and wanting to be dead. But in reality people get used to it pretty quickly and their mental world adapts.
- tsimionescu 4y agoI am very surprised by this given how extremely traumatic solitary confinement is for prisoners, even for just a few days.
- isx726552 4y agoSurprised the article doesn’t mention “Ghost Boy” by Martin Pistorius, a first hand account of a patient who spent years in this state: http://www.ghostboybook.com/ http://www.ghostboybook.com/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Pistorius https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Pistorius
- nelox 4y agoA good podcast about his story https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/locked-in/12910518 https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/l...
- odysseus 4y agoThere's also: * A man who woke after 6 years in a coma: https://web.archive.org/web/20081203230030/https://cornellsun.com/node/23962 https://web.archive.org/web/20081203230030/https://cornellsu... * Haleigh Poutre who woke after months in a coma: https://www.wwlp.com/news/haleigh-poutre-10-years-later/ https://www.wwlp.com/news/haleigh-poutre-10-years-later/ * Jesse Ramirez who was in a coma and declared "vegetative" but recovered 3 weeks later: https://www.eastvalleytribune.com/local/crash-survivor-s-case-spurs-new-state-law/article_486772f1-4bd0-59e3-b24f-073bbce7b543.html https://www.eastvalleytribune.com/local/crash-survivor-s-cas...
- gjsman-1000 4y agoFor more horror: There are stories of people who were legally brain dead who woke up - see Colleen Burns, for example. She woke up just before her organs were going to be removed for donation (quite literally under the surgical lights). The hospital was also fined for inexplicably (possibly maliciously) giving off-the-record sedatives when she started to show signs of life after the diagnosis - but she managed to wake up in time anyway. (It's also why I'm not an organ donor - I'm scared I won't actually be dead, and that the hospital is perhaps not the most impartial decision maker of whether I am dead.) https://www.syracuse.com/news/2013/07/st_joes_fined_over_dead_patien.html#incart_m-rpt-2 https://www.syracuse.com/news/2013/07/st_joes_fined_over_dea... https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/dead-patient-colleen-burns-wakes-amid-organ-donation-at-st-josephs-hospital-in-new-york/news-story/34528caaa27b635b4a349b37109dabdf https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/dead-patient-collee... See also Zack Dunlap, a 21-year-old man who claims to have heard the doctors pronounce his death - and also awoke very shortly before organ removal. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna23768436 https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna23768436 https://www.today.com/news/pronounced-dead-man-takes-miraculous-turn-2D80555113 https://www.today.com/news/pronounced-dead-man-takes-miracul... There are about a ~dozen others out there as well.
- guenthert 4y agoI am an organ donor, already donated one and can assure you I am not dead yet. Donating organs is an easy way (for the donor -- the medical staff is performing magic) to make a significant, positive difference. And frankly, for many of us, it's probably the only way. No need to be afraid.
- gjsman-1000 4y agoI'm not speaking about when you are alive, go ahead, donate. I'm only talking about the "Donor" tag on your driver's license after an accident - where, well, people have woken up who were considered "brain dead" and were sometimes just minutes from organ removal. Which naturally induces shivers about the people who would have woken up but didn't have enough time...
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- techdragon 4y agoThis is why I have on multiple occasions told people “I know it sounds stupid but if I’m ever in a coma, do not dare pull the fucking plug on me without an FMRI scan to look for any brain response to the outside world” I can only imagine how much it could suck to be like this, but the idea of being conscious and realising that I have no way to tell them I’m “in here” while they assume I’m never going to recover and pull the plug, slowly dying of dehydration or hypoxia, that is fucking Nightmare Fuel with a capital N capital F, as in No Fucking Way I ever want that to happen. I have made it clear on multiple occasions that I don’t care what you do once I’m definitely dead, but if you don’t make fucking sure to the best of science’s ability to check, … not just accepting the doctor saying I’m not responsive and I’m probably gone… if there’s an afterlife I will haunt them, If not I want them to know how much I disapprove and wish their children and children’s children will look upon the decision to not even check I’m alive with the utmost disapproval. It’s not fucking hard to check if there’s any brain activity in response to talking or touching or opening eyelids and holding things up in front of them… the alternative feels too monstrous to contemplate. We don’t exactly have dozens of stable coma patients who aren’t already likely to die from other issues related to injuries, etc… it really should be mandatory for stable coma patients to be rigorously scanned to make sure we aren’t accidentally murdering people like this… Also in case anyone mistakes my phrasing as some sort of pro-life or anti-suicide thing… their body their choise… and I also fully support the right of any locked in person (among many other miserable conditions that also seem fair to allow medical suicide for) to say “fuck it, I’m out, this isn’t living” and be allowed medically assisted suicide, but they at least deserve to choose that to themselves. Hell.. I know I’d want the choice if I was in their shoes. Anyone that thinks someone should be forced to live like that should get their head examined.
- Retric 4y agoBeing stuck without interacting with the physical world for years seems like a much worse situation.
- techdragon 4y agoHence a rapid edit about my opinions regarding medical suicide.
- nonrandomstring 4y agoPerhaps more worrying is the people who appear to be conscious but are actually in a coma. [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qpn7C6r-WEM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qpn7C6r-WEM @ 7m20s
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- warbler73 4y agoReminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terri_Schiavo_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terri_Schiavo_case
- la64710 4y agoSad to think of all the lives we lost only if we knew then what we know now ……
- tremon 4y agoYes, to think of all the broken bones we could have mended in pre-Egyptian times; all the people who died needlessly from the Black Death in Europe; the sailors we lost to scurvy at sea. The numerous indigenous peoples that did not survive initial contact with European pathogens. So many lives lost needlessly.
- aliqot 4y agoThe hardest part would be to see my family move on, my wife remarry, and eventually the last person leaves, hoping that my departure is swift. Then I just wait while the medical staff picks me clean of their burden.
- sss111 4y agoWhy does the timestamp on the article say it was published on November 1, 2022. I'm not in the future, right? Someone help!
- capableweb 4y agoI'm guessing it's the date of when it was/will be published in the print magazine. This article will be in the next edition of Scientific American if so. Edit: Yes, seems to be correct. https://www.scientificamerican.com/magazine/sa/2022/11-01/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/magazine/sa/2022/11-01/ shows which articles are featured in the November edition, all of which have the published date as November 1.
- pmoriarty 4y agoThis reminds me of Johnny Got His Gun[1], about a wounded war vet who's locked in and unable to communicate with the outside world despite being conscious. It's a living nightmare. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Got_His_Gun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Got_His_Gun
- nickvec 4y agoStill can't believe I read that freshman year of high school as part of the English curriculum there. Book has stuck with me all these years. Good times.
- ChainOfFools 4y agocheck out the diving bell and the butterfly, movie adaptation of a first hand account of someone who went through this. incredibly powerful film, and the physical is only half of the nightmare. because the man who had become completely paralyzed (apart from one functional eyelid - his other eye was drying out and had to be sewn shut while he helplessly screamed in silence begging the doctor not to bring the needle near his eye) had a rather unflatteringly messy personal life, and was in a position of witnessing all of his dirty laundry being aired between his mistress, and his wife, and his dying father. all while he was completely competent mentally, but completely incapable of representing himself in any of the intrigues that were unearthed consequent to his injury. all a true story, written by the author while being locked in, one agonizing eye blank at a time with the aid of a nurse who finally figured out he was conscious.
- majestic5762 4y agoCan say it's true from my experience. My uncle cried and tried to grab my hand when he saw me near his hospital bed, even if he was in a coma. I've knew since then people might be awake even if we perceive then as vegetables
- jamiek88 4y agoSorry, no. That’s not what’s being talked about here. Movement and visible response is not locked in syndrome. Peace though in your grief.
- devteambravo 4y agoSpent a month in a coma. Can confirm! (Anecdotally)
- theonething 4y agoWould love to hear more if you don't mind. You were aware during the time? How did it feel?
- devteambravo 4y agoWhile on a foot patrol in southern Afghanistan, I took a 500lbs SVBIED impact. Went through a wall, woke up on the ground, confused. Black out, wake up on a chopper, confused. Black out. What happened next was a never-ending dream/nightmare loop that lasted a bit under 1mo. I went from dream world to dream world, until I woke up, with too many pipes coming out of too many places. I have the unfortunate experience of knowing what Neo felt like when he woke up from the matrix. It took me a few weeks to re-acclimate to reality, dealt with a lot of anxiety/panic attacks. It turns out that some of the people I met in the dreamworld were real people. That weird afghan lady who would never leave was in fact my wife. The torturer ended up being my cardiac technician, and he wasn't torturing, he was keeping me alive with cardiac massages. There's a lot more. Some of it was made up some of it was real. I woke up next to a picture of the president giving me a medal, and another picture of myself and bob dole. Basically, my brain was trying to survive, and it fished from books I read, movies I've seen, and then the little bits of reality my wounded self could gather. Pretty trippy stuff. The weird part? I remember that month long coma dream like a crystal clear memory. I'm trying to figure out the best way to brain dump this weird story in a sharable format, but you know. Gotta pay the the bills first. Maybe I'll write a book some day
- xrcyz 4y agoJust my two cents. Please consider brain dumping while the memories are fresh, as there is strong evidence that our memories evolve over time[1]. It sounds like you have a valuable story to tell. Editing can come later. [1] https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2015-09755-001 https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2015-09755-001
- neonate 4y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20221022165927/https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/some-people-who-appear-to-be-in-a-coma-may-actually-be-conscious/ https://web.archive.org/web/20221022165927/https://www.scien... https://archive.ph/Mlwn6 https://archive.ph/Mlwn6
- cpeterso 4y agoHamilton's Pharmacopeia did a show about people who could be temporarily woken from their comas by Ambien: > The first awakening occurred in 1999 when a man who had spent three years in a persistent vegetative state spontaneously regained consciousness after ingesting a 10mg tablet. Since then, hundreds of patients have experienced miraculous recoveries from traumatic brain injury using Ambien. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTFicgrVk0w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTFicgrVk0w
- armchairhacker 4y agoAmbien is an incredibly strange drug. Even in people without brain damage, it can cause hallucinations, weird dreams, sleep walking/eating/other actions (sometimes dangerous, like sleep driving), and major personality shifts. It's commonly used to treat insomnia, though I believe it's being used less and less due to the side effects
- enlyth 4y agoIt is indeed a strange drug. I take it on occasions like nights before stressful events such as travelling, to make sure I am well rested the next day. Normally I'm quite an anxious person and suffer from insomnia, so this works wonders to calm my brain down and make me go to bed. One of the weird side effects is that if I don't go to sleep and force my self to be awake, I get these quirky weak hallucinations, like the letters on my screen are 'wobbly' individually. Static images shift in dream like manners, like they're animated. It looks completely real but I know it isn't, and doesn't particularly impair me, just gives a slight mellow chill. I can see the recreational potential in this drug, but for insomniacs it can be a godsend to have a small "you will fall asleep in 15 minutes" kill-switch on demand when you need it.
- quickthrower2 4y agoHave you tried amitriplitine? It is mild stuff by comparison and sleepiness is a useful side effect. Before taking it I had insomnia, prescribed this drug for different reasons but it helped with that: especially the wake up at 3am problem but also the get to sleep problem. But it is mild as to not worry me I can wake up in an emergency and be lucid if needed.
- BrandoElFollito 4y agoThis is why I dream of a system that I could have as an implant and that would release a poison of I do not "log" every now and then. I would absolutely prefer to be dead then to be in such a coma, or paralyzed. Or if I have Alzheimer. The mere idea that there is a predictable end wild make it easier to go through that.
- FredPret 4y agoThat’s a password you want to remember
- cercatrova 4y agoThat is called a dead man's switch.
- BrandoElFollito 4y agoWell, kinda. "Dead" is the expected outcome of the switch :)
- nr2x 4y agoI’ve definitely seen the inverse to be true.
- chatterhead 4y agoAwakenings (1990) was an interesting movie and I believe based on a true story. Sounds like the Ambien effects some folks are mentioning. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099077 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099077
- dccoolgai 4y agoMy secret fear is that anaesthesia doesn't make you lose consciousness, it just makes you forget.
- archibaldJ 4y agoIt does induce real-time physiological changes the way a meditative monk can walk on needles while balancing themselves. So I don't think anaesthesia has anything to do with the memory-aspect of forgetting.
- postalrat 4y agoSuffering before death obviously can't be remember. If anesthesia only makes you just forget or not able to form memories then wouldn't it be just as bad?
- phdelightful 4y agoYou don’t have to worry. There are physiological responses to pain and trauma that the anesthesiologist can observe, even if you are unconscious. Things as simple as heart rate and respiration all the way up to brain wave monitoring. This is part of the anesthesiologists job.
- Consultant32452 4y agoThat's what propofol is for. That's what they give you when they have to do fucked up shit to you but want you awake. Like skin debriding after you've had severe burns. In the medical industry it's known as "milk of amnesia" because it's white and you don't remember.
- 93po 4y agoI've heard of something like this too for popping dislocated joints back into sockets. It sounds super creepy because you apparently still scream out in pain but don't remember it.
- LocalH 4y agoHave you ever received anaesthesia? For me, it was one of the most surreal things I've ever experienced, including psychedelic experiences. The reason it was so surreal is because I have no internal chronology of the surgery (minor surgery to insert two pins into my left ring finger after it was broken). I was actively paying attention to the experience, and there was nothing in between going under and waking up in the recovery room. Not a blank void or an emptiness, not an internal hallucination, but nothing. The experience for me was very much like fading out on the table and almost immediately waking up in the recovery room. By comparison, a potent DMT experience gave me the experience of being pushed and pulled through a local time loop, with a disconnect between my internal chronology and my perception of time, and that was less surreal to me than just outright losing an hour. The combination of these two events gives me the perception that time is not at all what the vast majority of people think it is, and that everyone most likely experiences the passage of time at a different rate. We all externally synchronize via clocks and measured time, so no matter how fast or slow you experience time, you're tethered to the unit of "seconds" in a fashion. That's honestly probably one of the things that contributes to the mistaken belief that we perceive objective reality, but that's honestly a hell of a tangent.
- PostOnce 4y agoThey told me my dad was brain-dead. He wasn't. His wife was going to pull the plug, but during the week we were fighting over it, he began to be able to blink to communicate. He then said he did not want the plug pulled. We should be more honest about how fuzzy and inaccurate our understanding of consciousness is right now, and not pretend that neuroscience is as mature as some other sciences. We should also be more honest about the fact that many "pull the plug" conversations are about hospital expenses, not about science or ethics.
- themitigating 4y agoI think it comes down to resources. If someone is in a coma for more than a year continued care uses resources that could be redirected to others who aren't in a coma even if there's a small probability the person would wake up
- PostOnce 4y agoWe're not talking about a small town in Moldova, we're talking about Boston. America has, for many intents and purposes, unlimited resources. We waste more money than most countries even have. We could do whatever we want medically, we just choose not to. Individual hospitals may have constraints, but only because we as a nation choose to allow them to. The JWST cost as much as 100 new hospitals. We once built half a supercollider that probably cost more than that (relative to then-current construction costs) and never even used it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider Don't get me wrong, I approve of those projects; they're just good examples of how almost hilariously wealthy we are. We're hardly unable to offer medical care to everyone in need and then some. We just let crooks take over the economy.
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- themitigating 4y agoI believe there should be government run healthcare but there's still limited resources. You're missing my main point, keeping someone alive in a coma for years has little value. Assuming we can devise tests on whether they are awake. Now imagine we can determine they are conscious. Then we should still put then out of their misery assuming we can't bring them out of it. You hear people talk about the horrors of solitary confinement, this is even worse.
- wildeye 4y agoI have read about it in 2010 in the book "Pictures of the Mind: What the New Neuroscience Tells Us About Who We Are" The reason i have bought this book was this sleep paralysis that I had that time. I was thinking a lot how to help these people in comma. I have bought this eeg by emotive. So my idea was that person who cant communicate with world but can hear us actually can communicate with us by thinking. So you need first to teach him morse code. Once he is ready you ask him to imagine he is walking for short on long period of time or he is lookong to the roght or left before deciding left is short right is long. His head with eeg let us interpretate the data. So I was able to test it on myself. I wrote about it to some university but they nevere replayed me.
- wseqyrku 4y agoYeah they should shoot them to avoid premature burial.
- swader999 4y agoI can confirm this.
- Borrible 4y agoMy studies on the subject, that is observations, experiments, exchanges with experts and reading of the relevant literature, have led me to the firm conviction that the normal case is the exact opposite. Most people who appear to be conscious are not, for most of their lives. However, I am also a cynic who threw away his lantern some time ago.
- Kiboneu 4y agoYeah, a dead mind can operate with the world like a dead fish[1] that swims up-stream. 1: https://fyfluiddynamics.com/2018/07/when-i-was-a-child-my-father-would-take-me-trout/ https://fyfluiddynamics.com/2018/07/when-i-was-a-child-my-fa...