In 1983 Rom Houben, a 20-year-old Belgian, was left unconscious by an automobile accident. Doctors concluded, after extensive testing, that, like Terri Schiavo, he was as good as dead. For undisclosed reasons, though, nobody made the “rational, humane” decision to terminate his intravenous feeding and let him die.
Yet he was, year after year, fully conscious, according to this report from the Daily Mail:
Rom Houben, trapped in his paralysed body after a car crash, described his real-life nightmare as he screamed to doctors that he could hear them – but could make no sound.
‘I screamed, but there was nothing to hear,’ said Mr Houben, now 46, who doctors thought was in a persistent vegetative state.
‘I dreamed myself away,’ he added, tapping his tale out with the aid of acomputer. . . .
‘All that time I just literally dreamed of a better life. Frustration is too small a word to describe what I felt.’
Three years ago, a brain scans conducted at the University of Liege –
showed his brain was still functioning almost completely normally. Mr Houben described the moment as ‘my second birth’. Therapy has since allowed him to tap out messages on a computerscreen. . . . He is never likely to leave hospital, but as well as his computer he now has a special device above his bed which lets him read books while lying down.
Steven Laureys, the doctor who saved Mr. Houben, believes that his condition is far from rare. A recent study that he co-authored found that 40 percent of a group of coma patients diagnosed as “vegetative” in fact were conscious to a greater or lesser degree.
A frequent argument against capital punishment is the risk of executing an innocent man. Shouldn’t we also think about that risk before starving and dehydrating the allegedly vegetative? The Daily Mail’s article concludes with a chilling anecdote:
Twenty years ago, Carrie Coons, an 86-year-old from New York, regained consciousness after a year, took small amounts of food by mouth and engaged in conversation.
Only days before her recovery, a judge had granted her family’s request for the removal of the feeding tube which had been keeping her alive.
I hope that Mrs. Coons had the opportunity after regaining consciousness to rewrite her will.
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