Be thankful you aren’t this guy
_
Grasping for something to feel thankful for this week? Yeah, I know a lot of things generally suck this year, but be thankful that at least you aren’t this guy…
For 23 tortuous years, Rom Houben says he lay trapped in his paralyzed body, aware of what was going on around him but unable to tell anyone or even cry out. The car-crash victim had been diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state but appears to have been conscious the whole time! An expert using a specialized type of brain scan that was not available in the 1980s finally realized it and now the 46-year-old Houben is able to communicate with one finger and a special touchscreen on his wheelchair.
“I screamed, but there was nothing to hear,” he wrote with the aid of the computer. “All that time I just literally dreamed of a better life. Frustration is too small a word to describe what I felt… I want to enjoy my life now that people know I am not dead. The day they discovered what was truly wrong with me — it was my second birth.”
While a 23-year error is highly unusual, the wrong diagnosis of patients with consciousness disorders is far too common, according to the study, led by Steven Laureys of Belgium’s Coma Science Group. It is estimated that of the 100,000 people who suffer from a severe traumatic brain injury each year in Germany alone, some 3,000 to 5,000 of them remain in an intermediate stage and never come back again.
Man!… Think about that… This guy has been laying in a hospital bed since 1983. The last time he was up and walking around, the Soviet Union existed and had just invaded a country called Afghanistan! He’s never experienced a President Bush. The final episode of M*A*S*H was aired. Michael Jackson performed his signature “moonwalk” for the first time. Sally Ride became the first American woman in space. Tom Brokaw became the anchor of NBC Nightly News. The Apple Macintosh computer did not yet exist.
Now, aren’t you glad you’re NOT that guy? He hasn’t had sex in at least nearly a quarter-century!
By comparison, spending all day Thursday with your nagging mother and your alcoholic uncle seems like a privilege.
What a strange story! Like a Stephen King book, minus the folks Maine characters.