Rethinking Unconscious: ‘Second Birth’ After 23-Year Coma

One of the most beautiful films I’ve ever seen is The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Directed by Julian Schnabel, it’s the screen adaptation of a memoir by Jean-Dominique Bauby. The editor in chief of the French magazine Elle, Bauby suffered a massive stroke that left him a victim of locked-in syndrome at age 43. He went on to author his memoir by blinking his left eyelid as a transcriber repeatedly recited the alphabet until Bauby blinked to choose the next letter.

I am reminded of Bauby by the story of a man who is now able to tell of the horror he endured for 23 years after he was misdiagnosed as being in a coma. He was conscious the whole time:

Doctors used a range of coma tests before reluctantly concluding that his consciousness was ‘extinct’.

But three years ago, new hi-tech scans 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 computer screen.

Mr Houben said: ‘All that time I just literally dreamed of a better life. Frustration is too small a word to describe what I felt.’

His case has only just been revealed in a scientific paper released by the man who ’saved’ him, top neurological expert Dr Steven Laureys.

‘Medical advances caught up with him,’ said Dr Laureys, who believes there may be many similar cases of false comas around the world.

The disclosure will also renew the right-to-die debate over whether people in comas are truly unconscious.

Discussion via Memeorandum. I got there via Duncan Rawlinson.