“Why didn't you wake me up?"
-- Part Two of Three
Those of you who are regular readers of TN&V
and/or National Right to Life News know we often run features on
the mystery that is the severely brain-injured patient. (See,
for example,
http://www.nrlc.org/news/2003/NRL10/Awakening.htm and
http://www.nrlc.org/news/2006/NRL10/Edit2.html)
My point is not complicated, even though brain
injuries are: too often patients are shoehorned into the
let’s-forget-them category of “persistent vegetative state” (PVS).
When that doesn’t work or fit—often when the patient awakens—the
fall-back position is to say they were never in a PVS but in a
“minimally conscious state,” said to be somewhere on the
brain-injury spectrum between a PVS and a coma.
Obviously, such labels and diagnoses are
notoriously slippery and vague. Take the case of Christa Lilly,
discussed in both an Associated Press (AP) story and an account
in the Denver Post.
The basics are the same. Since suffering a heart
attack and a stroke in November 2000, Lilly has awakened on five
separate occasions. The first time was in 2001; she spoke for
about an hour and a half. The latest began last Sunday morning,
and lasted three days.
Her faithful mom— 73-year-old Minnie
Smith—greeted her daughter as she always does: “Hi, babe, how
you doing today?" to which Lilly responded, “Fine,” her first
words in eight months.
But while the Post insists the 49-year-old Lilly
is in a “minimally conscious state,” the AP account describes
her as having gone into a “vegetative state” more than six years
ago. Why she awakes is a puzzle to her neurologist, Dr. Randall
Bjork. "I'm just not able to explain this on the basis of what
we know about persistent vegetative states,'' he told the AP.
Double back to the Denver Post story and we’re
told, “Physicians say they too are astounded by Lilly's
awakening, but they caution that she didn't wake from a coma or
a true vegetative state.” Those “physicians” include Dr. Don
Smith of the Colorado Neurological Institute and Dr. James
Kelly, a neurologist at the University of Colorado Hospital.
As best I can tell from the story, neither has
examined Lilly.
According to the Post, “Lilly has spent the past
six years in what Kelly and Smith describe as a ‘minimally
conscious state’”—which happens to be “a term Kelly said was
coined by neurologists meeting in Aspen in the late 1990s.”
About a year ago Minnie Smith told Dr. Bjork, a
Colorado Springs neurologist, that her daughter has “intervals
of lucidity, that she wakes up, eats and drinks from a cup,”
according to the Post. Bjork didn’t believe her but asked Smith
to bring Lilly to his office the next time her daughter had an
awakening.
On Tuesday, Lilly showed up—“with a TV crew from
CBS affiliate KKTV in tow.”
"He was quite shocked," Minnie Smith told the
Post. "He asked her: 'How you doing?' and she said,
'I'm doing fine, how 'bout you?'
"He almost fainted," Smith said. "He'd never
heard her voice."
Lilly told television station KKTV-TV, "I think
it's wonderful. It makes me so happy.”
{You can watch the interview at
http://ww2.kktv.com/global/video/popup/pop_player.asp?ClipID1=1286320&h1=Woman%20Who%20Woke%20Up%20After%206%20Years%20Relapses&vt1=v&at1=News&d1=121867&LaunchPageAdTag=News&
fvCatNo=&backgroundImageURL=&activePane=info&playerVersion=9&hostPageUrl=http%3A//www.kktv.com/home/headlines/6347997.html&rnd=67851638]
Lilly also got to see her youngest daughter,
Chelcey, now 12 years old, and three grandchildren.
Wednesday, she lapsed back into what seems to be
unconsciousness, according to published accounts.
The Post story ends by telling the reader that
each time Lilly wakes up her mother talks to her about how long
she's been gone.
"We tell her: 'We're glad that you're awake,' and
we tell her, 'You've been asleep for years,' because it's been
seven years now," Smith says.
"She says, 'I have? Why didn't you wake me up?"'
But the AP story ends with a quote from her
mother, after Lilly relapsed. "The good Lord let me know she's
alright,” Smith said, “he brings her back to visit every so
often and I'm thankful for that."
If you have a comment or a question, please write
Dave Andrusko at
daveandrusko@hotmail.com
Part One
Part Three
