Are you listening, Michael Schiavo?
The stunning news came out this morning that a woman suddenly awoke from a coma of about seven years, and I’ve barely heard about it in the news yet. However, you can hear about it, and see the amazing pictures, here.
A Southern Colorado woman was in a vegetative state for more than 6 years and talked with CBS affiliate KKTV in Colorado Springs.
Christa Lilly had a heart attack and a stroke in 2000. That’s the last thing she remembers.
Lilly slipped into a vegetative state in Nov. of 2000. Family said she was in what is essentially a coma, but with her eyes open.
Lilly was unconscious and unaware of her surroundings, doctors told the family.
Almost 7 years later, she’s awake and aware.
“I think it’s wonderful. It makes me so happy,” Lilly said.
Lilly said her biggest frustration is learning how to talk again.
“This is a miracle,” Lilly’s neurologist, Dr. Randall Bjork, said.
He checked to see her how her brain is functioning. He said he’s as surprised as everyone else.
“This is all mystical and I can’t explain it,” said Bjork.
I heard Bjork on Fox News briefly, and he said this awakening “absolutely causes us to reevaluate the whole situation” with patients in a “vegetative state“, and that it “should give pause for anyone considering such a Draconian measure” as terminating the life a such patients. The story and legacy of Terri Schiavo lives on.
0 Comment
Sheila:
I wish I could remember where I saw the other story on this that is very similar. I saw it on a television program within the last year and I believe it was reported on PBS, but I can’t be sure. It was a roundtable discussion about another patient, this time it was a man, in which the very same thing happened. These three doctors were discussing the case and their preliminary research appears to conclude that in mentally damaged patients, like the one mentioned above, the brain, it appears, can regenerate and repair itself. I remember that they had brain scans of the man after his injury and then now after he woke up. The original scans showed little activity and the latter showed lots of activity. The three researchers were on the forefront of studying how the brain can repair itself when damaged severely. If anyone out there remembers this too, perhaps we can find the broadcast and add to Sheila’s growing evidence that persons with severely damaged brains are not necessarily “dead”. And it could give hope to those with relatives in a coma or apparently unconscious.