News, Man Awakens After 12 Years in a “Vegetative State,” Says “I Was Aware of Everything” (parent, disabled)
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In the 1980’s, 12-year-old Martin Pistorious became seriously ill with what doctor’s believed was Cryptococci Meningitis. His health started deteriorating and Martin lost his ability to move, make eye contact and even speak to others. His doctors told his parents, Rodney and Joan Pistorious, to bring him home and let him die. They told them he was as good as a vegetable.
However, he didn’t die.
Joan said, “Martin just kept going, just kept going.”
Tell you what. Tell me that I'll be locked in for twelve years, unable to move or communicate in any way but able to perceive and understand everything happening around me, but that at the end of those twelve years I'll make a full recovery, and I'll say just kill me now.
(Not that he made a full recovery, judging from the picture accompanying the NPR story.)
And he felt pain, so if something happen to hurt him, or if they fed him something to hot, he says it burned, but he couldn't do anything about it.
I wondered about the 'vegetative state' thing too. Thanks for the clarification on that -- which the ARTICLE SHOULD have done. Because as I was reading other articles on it, I was thinking, 'well what he had didn't seem like vegetative state -- and it wasn't.
Sure made me think about my living will, which says family can pull the plug after of month of BRAIN death, but NOT for vegetative state. The article did have me asking....was his 12 years of 'locked-in' given what he went through -- the mental agony alone....worth the amount of recovery he's had, being still severely disabled. Not that "is it worth it?" really the question ...but ......
Makes you think twice about pulling the plug on loved ones after you're told they're gone....
Agreed. At the very least I hope things like this make people determined to get multiple opinions on their loved one's conditions before doing anything. I wouldn't want a misdiagnosis to lead to unnecessary disaster.
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