This is why I have on multiple occasions told people “I know it sounds stupid but if I’m ever in a coma, do not dare pull the fucking plug on me without an FMRI scan to look for any brain response to the outside world”
I can only imagine how much it could suck to be like this, but the idea of being conscious and realising that I have no way to tell them I’m “in here” while they assume I’m never going to recover and pull the plug, slowly dying of dehydration or hypoxia, that is fucking Nightmare Fuel with a capital N capital F, as in No Fucking Way I ever want that to happen.
I have made it clear on multiple occasions that I don’t care what you do once I’m definitely dead, but if you don’t make fucking sure to the best of science’s ability to check,
… not just accepting the doctor saying I’m not responsive and I’m probably gone… if there’s an afterlife I will haunt them, If not I want them to know how much I disapprove and wish their children and children’s children will look upon the decision to not even check I’m alive with the utmost disapproval.
It’s not fucking hard to check if there’s any brain activity in response to talking or touching or opening eyelids and holding things up in front of them… the alternative feels too monstrous to contemplate. We don’t exactly have dozens of stable coma patients who aren’t already likely to die from other issues related to injuries, etc… it really should be mandatory for stable coma patients to be rigorously scanned to make sure we aren’t accidentally murdering people like this…
Also in case anyone mistakes my phrasing as some sort of pro-life or anti-suicide thing… their body their choise… and I also fully support the right of any locked in person (among many other miserable conditions that also seem fair to allow medical suicide for) to say “fuck it, I’m out, this isn’t living” and be allowed medically assisted suicide, but they at least deserve to choose that to themselves. Hell.. I know I’d want the choice if I was in their shoes. Anyone that thinks someone should be forced to live like that should get their head examined.
150 years ago premature burial was one of the greatest fears of many people.
George Washington famously feared premature burial. While on his deathbed in 1799, he instructed his personal secretary Tobias Lear to make sure he was dead before he was buried:
“Have me decently buried; and do not let my body be put into the vault in less than three days after I am dead.”
Washington ushered in an era of taphophobia, or fear of premature burial. During the 19th century, popular books and magazines promoted the idea that many people were buried alive. They reported tales of bloody shrouds, gnawed fingers and horribly contorted bodies inside their coffins.
“Less than 150 years ago many medical practitioners freely admitted to being uncertain whether their patients were dead or alive,” wrote Jan Bondeson in Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of Our Most Primal Fear, published in 2002.
So you would rather be stuck in a state where you are aware of your surroundings but have no way to communicate with the outside world for potentially years or decades than suffer for minutes to a few days at the most?
You and I have very, very, different definitions of “nightmare fuel.”
I would tell people to kill me instantly. Imagine just looking foward with no interaction and just your thoughts? I'd go insane and right now I'm thinking of those in comas.
Am I weird that I think suffering past a certain level is worse than death?
> The medical team gave her an EEG—placing sensors on her head to monitor her brain’s electrical activity—while they asked her to “keep opening and closing your right hand.” Then they asked her to “stop opening and closing your right hand.” Even though her hands themselves didn’t move, her brain’s activity patterns differed between the two commands.
A eeg is afaik done as a matter of course in these situations. Fmri is not realistic or necessarily
If someone is in a coma and pulling the plug would take days to kill them, they should euthanize them. Either way the person will die, but euthanasia speeds up the process and helps if they are still conscious in there somewhere.
It's a weird place where we don't consider it killing to let a helpless body starve, but we do consider it killing to inject something that ends things quickly. Both sound like killing to me, and both are ok in some situations.
I once pondered upon what I would consider to still "be alive".
Some of these people who are in a coma can, as has been shown, still hear sound and react or even answer by activating certain brain regions which can be measured.
But what if you can't hear anymore? It doesn't seem to imply you're dead. For instance, I could imagine, purely hypothetically, that someone could use your sense of touch to input a bit-pattern or even Morsecode to initiate communication, to which one might be able to react by thinking (communicate back).
Of course, that seems highly impractical and unlikely to happen, but it is an interesting meditation to contemplate what one would consider for themselves to "be alive".
If you're really locked in, wouldn't you be going completely mad after only a few days or weeks? I approve of the idea to really make sure the person is brain dead, but how would you feel to be living locked in for months, years? How do they decide if you want mercy and for this to be done vs continue fighting to get back?
Conversely, I've told people that they are absolutely not to keep me on life support for months and years. If there's no prognosis for me waking up within a couple weeks, let me die. Don't risk trapping me in an endless, unendurable hell.
I like to imagine that if I were in that state that my wife would see to it that I get an sizeable administration of intravenous DMT. If I can’t wake in this dimension, let me dream another.
“Also in case anyone mistakes my phrasing as some sort of pro-life or anti-suicide thing… their body their choise…” - applying a similar logic wouldn’t it fair to say: Their equipment, their choice?
A schoolfriend was in a coma for a while after a sports injury[1]. He told us how his parents brought a bottle of lucozade for him to have if he woke up and after they left he heard staff discussing how since he was never going to wake up they would just drink it themselves.
During WWII, my grandfather survived a mortar shell fragment through his skull, leaving him completely paralyzed and blind. He recounted being able to clearly hear the conversations of the doctors and nurses caring for him, and credited his desire to prove them wrong about him being comatose for his eventual recovery. After several months, he was able to move, and eventually regained sight, speech, and most of his mobility. (He lived well into his 70s - long outlasting the physician who diagnosed him, as he would mention on the rare occasions when he discussed his injuries.)
For more horror: There are stories of people who were legally brain dead who woke up - see Colleen Burns, for example. She woke up just before her organs were going to be removed for donation (quite literally under the surgical lights). The hospital was also fined for inexplicably (possibly maliciously) giving off-the-record sedatives when she started to show signs of life after the diagnosis - but she managed to wake up in time anyway. (It's also why I'm not an organ donor - I'm scared I won't actually be dead, and that the hospital is perhaps not the most impartial decision maker of whether I am dead.)
If you read the medical literature on this they always claim that the test(s!) for death are reliable. But either they aren't, or people aren't able to always reliably perform the tests, or they don't want to.
Agreed that the hospital staff are not impartial, thus, the third option is not unlikely in my mind.
French word for undertaker is 'croquemort' which seems to mean "bite-dead" .. a final check to ensure proper lack of life from an unresponsive body. A low success profession according to the numerous scratch marks found in caskets.
I am an organ donor, already donated one and can assure you I am not dead yet.
Donating organs is an easy way (for the donor -- the medical staff is performing magic) to make a significant, positive difference. And frankly, for many of us, it's probably the only way.
Hamilton's Pharmacopeia did a show about people who could be temporarily woken from their comas by Ambien:
> The first awakening occurred in 1999 when a man who had spent three years in a persistent vegetative state spontaneously regained consciousness after ingesting a 10mg tablet. Since then, hundreds of patients have experienced miraculous recoveries from traumatic brain injury using Ambien.
This reminds me of Johnny Got His Gun[1], about a wounded war vet who's locked in and unable to communicate with the outside world despite being conscious.
check out the diving bell and the butterfly, movie adaptation of a first hand account of someone who went through this. incredibly powerful film, and the physical is only half of the nightmare. because the man who had become completely paralyzed (apart from one functional eyelid - his other eye was drying out and had to be sewn shut while he helplessly screamed in silence begging the doctor not to bring the needle near his eye) had a rather unflatteringly messy personal life, and was in a position of witnessing all of his dirty laundry being aired between his mistress, and his wife, and his dying father.
all while he was completely competent mentally, but completely incapable of representing himself in any of the intrigues that were unearthed consequent to his injury. all a true story, written by the author while being locked in, one agonizing eye blank at a time with the aid of a nurse who finally figured out he was conscious.
Still can't believe I read that freshman year of high school as part of the English curriculum there. Book has stuck with me all these years. Good times.
Can say it's true from my experience. My uncle cried and tried to grab my hand when he saw me near his hospital bed, even if he was in a coma. I've knew since then people might be awake even if we perceive then as vegetables
The hardest part would be to see my family move on, my wife remarry, and eventually the last person leaves, hoping that my departure is swift. Then I just wait while the medical staff picks me clean of their burden.
His wife was going to pull the plug, but during the week we were fighting over it, he began to be able to blink to communicate. He then said he did not want the plug pulled.
We should be more honest about how fuzzy and inaccurate our understanding of consciousness is right now, and not pretend that neuroscience is as mature as some other sciences.
We should also be more honest about the fact that many "pull the plug" conversations are about hospital expenses, not about science or ethics.
anything is worse than death as the dead don't suffer, by all currently available evidence.
but yeah, this one is definitely the absolute worse thing that could happen to someone, and let's not forget it is entirely man-made, given that fully paralyzed people are being forcefully kept alive by some f*cking sadist of a pro-lifer...
My studies on the subject, that is observations, experiments, exchanges with experts and reading of the relevant literature, have led me to the firm conviction that the normal case is the exact opposite.
Most people who appear to be conscious are not, for most of their lives.
However, I am also a cynic who threw away his lantern some time ago.
As a horror writer, I can’t help but wonder what sorts of stories this leads to, and what you might get wrong while writing about it…
By conscious, do they mean “aware”, or do they also mean “actively thinking about what they are experiencing” ? How often do they come out of it? Do they have clear memories of it?
I have read about it in 2010 in the book "Pictures of the Mind: What the New Neuroscience Tells Us About Who We Are"
The reason i have bought this book was this sleep paralysis that I had that time.
I was thinking a lot how to help these people in comma. I have bought this eeg by emotive.
So my idea was that person who cant communicate with world but can hear us actually can communicate with us by thinking. So you need first to teach him morse code. Once he is ready you ask him to imagine he is walking for short on long period of time or he is lookong to the roght or left before deciding left is short right is long. His head with eeg let us interpretate the data.
So I was able to test it on myself. I wrote about it to some university but they nevere replayed me.
[+] [-] neonate|3 years ago|reply
https://archive.ph/Mlwn6
[+] [-] techdragon|3 years ago|reply
I can only imagine how much it could suck to be like this, but the idea of being conscious and realising that I have no way to tell them I’m “in here” while they assume I’m never going to recover and pull the plug, slowly dying of dehydration or hypoxia, that is fucking Nightmare Fuel with a capital N capital F, as in No Fucking Way I ever want that to happen.
I have made it clear on multiple occasions that I don’t care what you do once I’m definitely dead, but if you don’t make fucking sure to the best of science’s ability to check, … not just accepting the doctor saying I’m not responsive and I’m probably gone… if there’s an afterlife I will haunt them, If not I want them to know how much I disapprove and wish their children and children’s children will look upon the decision to not even check I’m alive with the utmost disapproval.
It’s not fucking hard to check if there’s any brain activity in response to talking or touching or opening eyelids and holding things up in front of them… the alternative feels too monstrous to contemplate. We don’t exactly have dozens of stable coma patients who aren’t already likely to die from other issues related to injuries, etc… it really should be mandatory for stable coma patients to be rigorously scanned to make sure we aren’t accidentally murdering people like this…
Also in case anyone mistakes my phrasing as some sort of pro-life or anti-suicide thing… their body their choise… and I also fully support the right of any locked in person (among many other miserable conditions that also seem fair to allow medical suicide for) to say “fuck it, I’m out, this isn’t living” and be allowed medically assisted suicide, but they at least deserve to choose that to themselves. Hell.. I know I’d want the choice if I was in their shoes. Anyone that thinks someone should be forced to live like that should get their head examined.
[+] [-] orangepurple|3 years ago|reply
George Washington famously feared premature burial. While on his deathbed in 1799, he instructed his personal secretary Tobias Lear to make sure he was dead before he was buried:
“Have me decently buried; and do not let my body be put into the vault in less than three days after I am dead.”
Washington ushered in an era of taphophobia, or fear of premature burial. During the 19th century, popular books and magazines promoted the idea that many people were buried alive. They reported tales of bloody shrouds, gnawed fingers and horribly contorted bodies inside their coffins.
“Less than 150 years ago many medical practitioners freely admitted to being uncertain whether their patients were dead or alive,” wrote Jan Bondeson in Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of Our Most Primal Fear, published in 2002.
https://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/when-fears-of-pr...
[+] [-] marcus0x62|3 years ago|reply
You and I have very, very, different definitions of “nightmare fuel.”
[+] [-] themitigating|3 years ago|reply
Am I weird that I think suffering past a certain level is worse than death?
[+] [-] version_five|3 years ago|reply
A eeg is afaik done as a matter of course in these situations. Fmri is not realistic or necessarily
[+] [-] dusted|3 years ago|reply
How is being trapped inside your head, potentially forever less of a nightmare scenario?
I'll go the opposite "If you detect I'm conscious, kill me asap!"
[+] [-] Buttons840|3 years ago|reply
It's a weird place where we don't consider it killing to let a helpless body starve, but we do consider it killing to inject something that ends things quickly. Both sound like killing to me, and both are ok in some situations.
[+] [-] Retric|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sva_|3 years ago|reply
Some of these people who are in a coma can, as has been shown, still hear sound and react or even answer by activating certain brain regions which can be measured.
But what if you can't hear anymore? It doesn't seem to imply you're dead. For instance, I could imagine, purely hypothetically, that someone could use your sense of touch to input a bit-pattern or even Morsecode to initiate communication, to which one might be able to react by thinking (communicate back).
Of course, that seems highly impractical and unlikely to happen, but it is an interesting meditation to contemplate what one would consider for themselves to "be alive".
[+] [-] karamanolev|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Waterluvian|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PhasmaFelis|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lowbloodsugar|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notfed|3 years ago|reply
This is a fair point, and for me I would accept the solution of massive doses of diamorphine.
[+] [-] beaker52|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] russdill|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wruza|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roflyear|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kingkawn|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] klondike_|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] rideg|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seanhunter|3 years ago|reply
[1] Rugby scrum collapse
[+] [-] GolfPopper|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gjsman-1000|3 years ago|reply
https://www.syracuse.com/news/2013/07/st_joes_fined_over_dea...
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/dead-patient-collee...
See also Zack Dunlap, a 21-year-old man who claims to have heard the doctors pronounce his death - and also awoke very shortly before organ removal.
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna23768436
https://www.today.com/news/pronounced-dead-man-takes-miracul...
There are about a ~dozen others out there as well.
[+] [-] jtbayly|3 years ago|reply
If you read the medical literature on this they always claim that the test(s!) for death are reliable. But either they aren't, or people aren't able to always reliably perform the tests, or they don't want to.
Agreed that the hospital staff are not impartial, thus, the third option is not unlikely in my mind.
[+] [-] agumonkey|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guenthert|3 years ago|reply
Donating organs is an easy way (for the donor -- the medical staff is performing magic) to make a significant, positive difference. And frankly, for many of us, it's probably the only way.
No need to be afraid.
[+] [-] cpeterso|3 years ago|reply
> The first awakening occurred in 1999 when a man who had spent three years in a persistent vegetative state spontaneously regained consciousness after ingesting a 10mg tablet. Since then, hundreds of patients have experienced miraculous recoveries from traumatic brain injury using Ambien.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTFicgrVk0w
[+] [-] isx726552|3 years ago|reply
http://www.ghostboybook.com/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Pistorius
[+] [-] odysseus|3 years ago|reply
* A man who woke after 6 years in a coma: https://web.archive.org/web/20081203230030/https://cornellsu...
* Haleigh Poutre who woke after months in a coma: https://www.wwlp.com/news/haleigh-poutre-10-years-later/
* Jesse Ramirez who was in a coma and declared "vegetative" but recovered 3 weeks later: https://www.eastvalleytribune.com/local/crash-survivor-s-cas...
[+] [-] nelox|3 years ago|reply
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/l...
[+] [-] pmoriarty|3 years ago|reply
It's a living nightmare.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Got_His_Gun
[+] [-] ChainOfFools|3 years ago|reply
all while he was completely competent mentally, but completely incapable of representing himself in any of the intrigues that were unearthed consequent to his injury. all a true story, written by the author while being locked in, one agonizing eye blank at a time with the aid of a nurse who finally figured out he was conscious.
[+] [-] nickvec|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] majestic5762|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aliqot|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PostOnce|3 years ago|reply
He wasn't.
His wife was going to pull the plug, but during the week we were fighting over it, he began to be able to blink to communicate. He then said he did not want the plug pulled.
We should be more honest about how fuzzy and inaccurate our understanding of consciousness is right now, and not pretend that neuroscience is as mature as some other sciences.
We should also be more honest about the fact that many "pull the plug" conversations are about hospital expenses, not about science or ethics.
[+] [-] SanjayMehta|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rumpelstinkin|3 years ago|reply
but yeah, this one is definitely the absolute worse thing that could happen to someone, and let's not forget it is entirely man-made, given that fully paralyzed people are being forcefully kept alive by some f*cking sadist of a pro-lifer...
[+] [-] DocJade|3 years ago|reply
It genuinely terrifies me that this could happen to anyone in a moments notice
[+] [-] devteambravo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theonething|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dccoolgai|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oneoff786|3 years ago|reply
It’s not obvious that they were by merely passing this covert consciousness test
[+] [-] Borrible|3 years ago|reply
Most people who appear to be conscious are not, for most of their lives.
However, I am also a cynic who threw away his lantern some time ago.
[+] [-] sss111|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] barbariangrunge|3 years ago|reply
By conscious, do they mean “aware”, or do they also mean “actively thinking about what they are experiencing” ? How often do they come out of it? Do they have clear memories of it?
[+] [-] wildeye|3 years ago|reply
The reason i have bought this book was this sleep paralysis that I had that time.
I was thinking a lot how to help these people in comma. I have bought this eeg by emotive.
So my idea was that person who cant communicate with world but can hear us actually can communicate with us by thinking. So you need first to teach him morse code. Once he is ready you ask him to imagine he is walking for short on long period of time or he is lookong to the roght or left before deciding left is short right is long. His head with eeg let us interpretate the data.
So I was able to test it on myself. I wrote about it to some university but they nevere replayed me.
[+] [-] ChoGGi|3 years ago|reply