Very sad.Some doctors, despite fancy degrees,make a cursory examination and arrive at a prognosis.
In this case brain activity should have been mapped or at least pupil dilation examination should have been more thorough.
It is very hard to digest that that this should happen because of inefficiency of the doctors.
Many of us regard doctors next to God, forgetting that medicine is an evolving science ; most of the treatments are exploratory in Nature and these procedures have contra indications as well;some of the medications are effective with out anybody knowing why and how it cures.Classic example is grand mal seizure .We know that this seizure is triggered by sudden increase in electrical discharges in the brain and Eption is prescribed to treat this.But none knows how it works or whether it has side effects.
Because of commercialization of medicine , neither the doctor nor the patient has the time to discuss family history of the patient;nor are the patients interested in slow and steady cure or allowing body to take care with minimal supportive treatment.
It is imperative for patients to inform and discuss with the doctor,your family history,your known allergies and your symptoms.
It is also mandatory on the part of the patients to check the medicines prescribed for contra indications.If yes, inform the doctor and have the medicine changed.Even then you should also chek up on internet about the medicine’s efficacy.This may sound tedious, but will save not only money, but your life as well.
When going for surgery check before hand the anesthesia that is about to me administered and see if it it is compatible with your system for some anesthetics are incompatible.
If you had any disease prior to surgery that has resulted in Edema(especially pulmonary), Nitrous oxide is to be shunned.
While getting tests being carried out make sure at the lab, it is done for the part for which you have problem i.e.what the doctor has prescribed and see that the report is yours when you collect it.Never depute somebody else to collect it.
Also popping pills based on advertisement or based on what your doctor has prescribed earlier ailments is dangerous.
All these jobs are to be carried out by Doctors.Unfortunately,Doctors have no time for patients for they are too busy.
Story:
Conscious but unable to communicate for 23 years after a car accident that was thought to have put him into a deep coma, a quadriplegic Belgian man has described how medical science finally put an end to his agonizing years of silence.
Now able to make himself understood via a computer and specially built keyboard, the man, Rom Houben, said in the Monday issue of the German magazine Der Spiegel that when doctors made the correct diagnosis, it was like starting a second life.
“I shall never forget the day when they discovered what was truly wrong with me — it was my second birth,” Mr. Houben, now 46, was quoted as saying.
Mr. Houben, who was an engineering student at the time of the accident, lives in a care home near Brussels. He was assumed to be in a persistent vegetative state until three years ago, when the breakthrough was made.
In the interview he recalled the aftermath of the car accident that paralyzed him and the realization that no one understood that he was fully conscious.
“I screamed, but there was nothing to hear,” he said. He added that he then became a witness to his own suffering as doctors and nurses tried to speak with him until they gave up all hope.
Using brain scanning techniques, Dr. Steven Laureys, a neurological researcher at the Liège University Hospital, discovered that Mr. Houben’s cerebral cortex was still active.
On Monday, Dr. Laureys, who recently published a paper on comas, said that as many as 4 out of 10 similar patients may have been misdiagnosed.
He also described the moment he realized, for the first time that Mr. Houben was fully conscious. “It was one of those rare moments where you really see that what you are doing is useful,” he said in a telephone interview.
“It was a very big moment not just for me but for the whole team, one of those few much-needed moments” for medical professionals.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/24/world/europe/24iht-coma.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=a4
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