My Response

After doing research and looking at real life cases I have learned many imporant facts about a comas. First off, I have learned that despite a comas being very rare, they are in fact quite scary. Although in some rare cases, people do not usually come back after a few weeks of being "alseep". If they do "wake up" they are now in a vegitated state which means they can not function or live alone. The next thing I did not know before i started my research on comas, is that people in comas are not actually asleep but they are just not consciencly "all there".

Real Life Case very --- recent

Airport hero John Smeaton, who prevented a terriest attack several weeks earlier, has woken from a two-week coma, his father said today.
The 32-year-old has been in intensive care in hospital since suffering an asthma attack.
He opened his eyes yesterday and was able to recognise his family and fiancee Christy MacPhedran, who flew from New York to be at his bedside.
His father Iain Smeaton said the family were delighted by his progress.
He said: "We are really happy that he has come through but he is still not out of the woods yet and has a long way to go.
"He can't communicate verbally but he can communicate by blinking his eyelids and looking at us and there's just a normal progression."
This took place only a few weeks ago on october 22

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/airport-hero-wakes-from-twoweek-coma-968988.html


For 20 years, Sarah Scantlin was seemingly unaware of the world around her after she was hit by a drunk driver in an accident that sent her into a comatose state in September of 1984. Then in February, she shocked her parents and doctors when she began to speak. In her first national television interview, after undergoing surgery on her long-unused limbs and speech therapy to unlock her long-dormant tongue, Scantlin speaks with The Early Show national correspondent Tracy Smith in a two-part interview to be broadcast Thursday and Friday. Smith also speaks with Sarah's parents, Jim and Betsy Scantlin, who never imagined they would talk to their daughter again. In a February interview on The Early Show , Sarah’s father recounted the phone call he and his wife got, informing them of the unimaginable.
This was a few years ago.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/08/05/earlyshow/series/main760296.shtml

What can cause a coma?

Comas can be caused by different things, including:

• a severe injury to the head that hurts the brain
  seizures
  
• infections involving the brain
  
• brain damage caused by a lack of oxygen for too long
  
• an overdose of medicine or other drugs
  
• a stroke

When one of these things happens it can affect the brain's cell work. This can hurt the parts of the brain that make someone conscious, and if those parts stop working, the person will stay unconscious.

Other causes are: consumption of a very large amount of alcohol, diabities, morphine, shock or hemorrhage. Treatment varies depending on the cause. Overall, in coma cases, damage to the brain's "thinking, and life support centers" have occurred. When damage has occurred, bleeding in the brain, swelling and congestion of the damaged tissue is present. In extreme cases, brain swelling is so great that portions of the brain must be forcible squeezed out of the skull. This dead or "dying" tissue is then surgically removed. An alternative to squeezing portions of the brain out of the skull is to saw off the skull and place it in a cold storage to better accommodate the swollen brain.

What happens when someone is in a coma?

Someone who is in a coma is unconscious and will not respond to voices, other sounds, or any sort of activity going on nearby. The person is still alive, but the brain is functioning at its lowest stage of alertness. You can't shake and wake up someone who is in a coma like you can someone who has just fallen asleep.


A coma is when someone is in an unconscience state and does not even respond when a great deal of pain is applied to them. It is a symptom of a disease or a response to an event, such as a severe head injury, seizure or metabolic problem. Most comas do not last longer than four weeks, but when some people in a coma shift to a persistent vegetative state, in which breathing, maintaining normal blood pressure, digesting and eliminating foods continues without the patient's awareness. The vegetative state can last for years or decades. The outcome of a coma ranges from full recovery to death. Whether a person recovers, and to what extent, depends upon the cause of the coma and the type and extent of the brain damage

http://www.mamashealth.com/coma.asp

There are different stages of a coma. Most people believe that a person in a coma is in a deep sleep. This is not entirely true. Some stages of coma resemble a deep sleep but not all. The progress of coma is measured by the patient's increasing awareness of external stimuli. There are many levels of coma which the patient will pass through as functionality increases. Depending on the stage, a person in a coma may make movements, sounds and experience agitation. Coma patients may also have reflex activities that mimic conscious activities. Sometimes, coma patients must be restrained to prohibit them from removing tubes and IVs.