Awakening

How accurate is today's medical criteria for deciding who lives and who dies? 

A man’s pregnant wife fell into a coma after losing a baby to a blood infection. She was unresponsive and on a ventilator for two weeks. When the hospital told the man they were going to pull the plug, he “snaps and tells his wife off,” according to news reports. Two hours later, she began breathing on her own. Eventually, she regained consciousness.

This story and others like it have made me think. I wish I could ask some questions of the couple and the hospital:

• Could the woman hear her husband “telling her off” while she was in a coma?
• Did the doctor have any explanation for her awakening?
• Has anyone explored the possibility that brain activity becomes so quiet during trauma that it becomes unmeasurable by medical standards, giving the false impression the person is, in effect, dead?
• Has the fact that some people have awakened after being declared dead made the hospital rethink its protocol for turning off the vent?
• As healthcare costs continue to skyrocket and improved medical technology prolongs lives that would have been lost in earlier times, has the medical field lost its collective patience and begun to replace compassion with convenience?
• Has the financial and emotional enticement to harvest organs for transplantation trampled the physician's promise to "do no harm" to the patient?1.

Err on the side of life

As a mother who has twice had to fight for the life of a beloved family member against the decision of a medical provider, I urge others to err on the side of life until we have the answers we need for these and other vital questions. 

Everyone deserves the chance for an awakening.

1.https://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/greek/greek_oath.html

Photo courtesy Erik Thorson 2023