Vegetative Mock Trial: An All-Too-Real Life and Death Scenario

Miracle Girl: Vegetative Mock Trial: An All-Too-Real Life and Death Scenario

Should a vegetative wife have her feeding tube removed? That was the question posed by a student mock trial. Yet the issues at stake are far from moot.

Would I have rather have been taken off life support and allowed to die? That's what the student asked me.

Seriously!???

Celebrating Coma Day: 5 Explorations of Covert Awareness

Miracle Girl: Celebrating Coma Day: 5 Explorations of Covert Awareness

Celebrating Coma Day -- the anniversary of my awakening -- by exploring my journey and the researchers who allow the covertly aware to speak for themselves. What better way to mark my rebirthday than by cheering the heroes of covert awareness?

Happy Coma Day!

Miracle Girl: Happy Coma Day!

Today is the third anniversary of my awakening, an event Keith has dubbed Coma Day. It awoke from a weird coma-dream into an almost as strange reality.

My doctors told my loved ones to give up all hope for my recovery, that I was profoundly brain-damaged and would never be the same. They were wrong.

I spent the rest of the day proving it.

SfMCR*: After the Awakening

This is the only photo taken of me at All Saints Healthcare. It was snapped on the day of my transfer, five days before my awakening.

I awoke from a dream of man-eating office machinery right out of the Twilight Zone, only to learn that I had actually been re-enacting Sleeping Beauty. I've told the story of the first moments after my awakening before, but the rest of the day was almost as surreal.

A female doctor walked in to evaluate the state of my cognition. Since I couldn't talk, all she could do was give me a multiple choice quiz. Which of these is the current president: Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, or Barack Obama? This was my first inkling that brain damage was still suspected. I shook my head on the first two and nodded on the last. I made a mental note to make sure everyone could tell that I was completely there.

My mom had explained that my doctors had written me off as a basket case. "The nurses hinting that I should let them pull the plug," she added in her typical blunt manner. She also stated that I had been a quadriplegic. Though I could barely lift my arms and legs, I did have a slight amount of movement. This didn't make any sense to me. My spinal cord had obviously not been damaged. How could this be? This statement only added to my perplexity. [She still says this. I think she bases her conclusion on my lack of movement during my coma. As a hyperactive person, I had always fidgeted and moved while awake. Though I was covertly aware during my coma, I wasn't fully awake. If I had been conscious, but paralyzed, I would've been in a lock-in state, not vegetative.] 

Though I was sure I had no signs of brain damage, confusion reigned as I tried to make sense of the mish mash of the details that trickled out about my illness.

Soon, a priest appeared and told me, "God is good," as I've written about before. My mom, who is also an atheist, was trying to be polite when she allowed him to come to my side. I, in turn, acquiesced with a slight nod of my head when he as asked me if he could pray for me. It made me feel extremely uncomfortable. Thankfully, he soon left.

My mother was obviously excited at my awakening, but sometimes she talks so much that details can get buried in the mix. This only added to my confusion. I was already getting an inkling of what my loved ones had gone through, however. My mom told me there had been a constant vigil by my side, a fact which a nurse confirmed. Keith would be coming by after work, my mom informed me. I couldn't wait for him to get there. I knew he would be happy.

When Keith arrived, I could hear the joy and relief in his voice. I only wish I could've seen his expression; I'm extremely nearsighted and I didn't have my contacts or glasses. A vegetable has no need for corrective lenses. Keith vowed to bring my glasses to me the next day. Though I couldn't see fine details, I could make out the breadth of his smile.

He told me that all my friends on Friends of the Mountain Dulcimer were rooting for me, and there was a separate cheering section on Facebook. "I can't wait to tell everyone you're back. Completely back." The relief in his voice was obvious.

Meanwhile, I mugged like a silent movie actor, trying to seem as vibrant and aware as possible. I did my best to display my sense of humor, through exaggerated facial expressions, comically timed looks, and a few mouthed words, which were often misunderstood. I wanted everyone to know that I was still completely me. Given my limited comic palette, I was at a considerable disadvantage in this endeavor. My humor is usually verbal.

As I continued to overemphasize my thereness, I stayed so animated that I quickly became exhausted. Yet I kept it up, anyway. I had to make sure everyone knew my mind was undamaged. Keith clearly couldn't get over the fact that my mind was still clearly intact. He had heard all the same discouraging things from my doctors.

And all the time, I struggled to piece together the picture of what had happened. Had I been in a coma six months or six weeks? [I think the confusion stemmed from my mother rounding up to two months, while Keith referred to it as the more precise six weeks. My mind conflated the two.] Why were objects labeled as belonging to "All Saints," when I had spent my coma in the Kaiser Panorama City hospital? No one thought to inform me (because they already knew) that I had been transferred to a nursing home only five days before my awakening. [As I've referred to repeatedly, it was the very activity involved with that move which sparked my awakening.]

Eventually, Keith had to go home and scarf down a quick dinner, then catch a few hours sleep...as he'd been doing for the previous six weeks.

I felt all but dead, wrung out by my forced activity in my coma-weakened state. But I awoke the next morning. And the next morning. And the following morning as well.




*SfMCR stands for Scenes from My Coma Recovery. This post is part of a continuing series of vignettes from my recovery.

Scenes from My Coma Recovery: The Awakening

I’m reading, “Writing Life Stories,” by Bill Roorbach, in preparation for writing my memoir. It’s an excellent book, and as a plus, it also deals with personal essay writing. I’ve already done pretty well on that score, with two essay sales under my belt, but there’s always room for improvement. At any rate, he teaches memoir writing, so he has a bunch of useful writing exercises in the book. One of them is to write vignettes about your past experiences. I could write about my childhood—there’s plenty of material there!—but I’ve decided instead to write about my recovery. These little stories, after all, will undoubtedly wind up in the memoir (although not in the same form), so writing them now will give me a head start. I’m calling this recurring series, “Scenes from My Coma Recovery.”  I thought the logical place to start would be my awakening.

  

Here I was, finally studying to become a paleontologist, as I had always wanted to do. Of course, when my class gathered to study in the noirish, 30s-era back rooms of the American Museum of Natural History (a place I’ve always dreamed of visiting), I didn’t expect that the vacuums and other machinery scattered about would suddenly spring to life and start attacking everyone. [No one expects the mechanical inquisition.] I had just managed to blockade the room I was hiding in from the rampaging Hoover, when the drill left in that room also went berserk. [Don’t ask me how it moved.]  How would I get out of this dire situation? I never got a chance to find out. Instead, I woke up to another improbable situation.

I opened my eyes and thought, “Goddamnit, I just fell back asleep.” (A recurring theme in my coma-dream was that I was having a miserably restless night’s sleep. Every time I started to drift off, something would wake me up again.)

But this time it was no dream.

“You’ve been in a coma for six weeks,” my mother told me. “You nearly died.”

“Seriously?” I said, or rather tried to say. I was so weak I could barely lift my head.

“Don’t try to speak,” she quickly added. “You won't be able to. You have a tube in your throat to help you breathe.”

It took a few minutes for it all to sink it. How could this be true? I was just sleeping….

Slowly, I pieced together what had happened. The doctors, I soon learned, had told my loved ones that I was profoundly brain damaged. I spent the rest of the day emphatically shaking and nodding my head at every comment and question, trying to make sure everyone knew I was fully awake and still me.