Being closed for 23 years in a body

"I meditated, I dreamed that I was somewhere else"

That was the answer of Rom Houben to the question of a journalist (Spiegel Online) about how he could survive the last 23 years being closed in his own body as he was misdiagnosed for more then two decades. Doctors and caregivers thought he was in coma after a severe car accident since he didn't give any respond to the signs of the outside world. But in fact he was there for the entire 23 years being paralized but absolutely conscious, hearing and seeing everything.

(source of the photo)

I can't imagine something more scary...its like a nightmare....having the experience that you are there but nobody sees you and you are unable to give any signs. An ultimate loneliness, a very frustrating state and I think I would like to scream but it would make me even more frustrated since I can't do that, nobody can hear it.

A Belgian neurologist Steven Laureys discovered that this guy was conscious. The Spiegel's article interpretation was that it was a lucky coincidence that he discovered it, but I don't think so. Dr Laureys is a member of the Coma Science Group at the University o Liege and as the article reports he had long suspected that many patients who are in coma are in fact conscious.

So this guy is looking for these cases intentionally and he emphasize that the cause of the failure in diagnose is in the system:

"Once someone is stamped as being 'not conscious,' it becomes very difficult to get rid of that label."

Laureys's team discovered 103 patients in coma in Belgium and among them 44 were diagnosed as clearly vegetative by their caregivers. When his team examined these patients they came to a totally different conclusion. They found 18 people of the 44 as responsive.

In my opinion the whole story is a metaphor that warns us very seriously of how do we care about each other.

You do not have to be in a state of coma to get stamped with a label. And after that...whoever you are in fact, whoever lives behind your label you will be considered just by your stamp. Its a very long and tiring process to listen to each other and to discover who is really inside. And nowdays we do not have that amount of time for each other. We need quick messages, icons and labels to identify each other as soon as possible and as we are done almost impossible to change that view.

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