Dealing with coma victims

The Boston Herald

BEVERLY BECKHAM

They're in there but you don't know how to reach them. You know it. You believe it. You cling to the fairy tale that a kiss - or something like a kiss - will wake them. You cling to everything.

You bring in a stuffed animal, a favorite thing, and you take it and rub it up and down against a cheek.

"Do you know who this is? Can you smell it? Can you feel it?"

And you pray that they can.

You hold a picture in front of unseeing eyes and say, "Remember this? Remember how much fun we had that day. I'm going to leave this picture on the nightstand next to the radio so every time you see it you'll remember."

Then you show more pictures, and identify family, friends.

You leave the radio on all day and all night even as you sit and talk. Sometimes you turn the radio up, when a song comes on that you know she loved and you hold her hand and quietly sing along with it.

Relatives come and friends too, many in the beginning, and they sit and clear their throats and try to make small talk.

"Just speak normally," a nurse says as she adjusts the bed. But normal is impossible. The words sound too loud in the room, too forced. All gaiety is artificial.

"There's this sale going on at Filenes, and you know that sweater you wanted? It's finally marked down."

"When you get better we've got to go to this new restaurant. I know you'd just love it. I went there yesterday with Barbara. You remember Barbara?"

"All your friends have been asking for you. They're all praying for you. They even mentioned your name in church on Sunday."

"Wake up," you whisper, every time you're alone. "Please wake up. Please."

You hold a hand that is cold and dry and rigid. But the nails are long. They have grown. They are growing.

"I know you can hear me," you say. "Squeeze my hand, Mama. Please, squeeze my hand."

Where there is life there is hope. That's what you believe. That's what you were taught to believe. The respirator pumps up and down. A tube fills with fluid. Hair grows on a tiny mole on the back of a hand.

I don't care how long it takes, you say. I don't care how much it costs. Just bring her back. Just make her well, God. That's what your mind continually repeats. That's what you constantly pray.

But the hospitals can keep them only so long. Once they have stopped making progress, once their prognosis is more of the same, they have to go somewhere else.

You could take them home. But going home means giving up. Going home means to accept the fact that this shell, this immobile, inert, body, this impenetrable mind is all that remains of the person you love.

You scream no. You were taught never to give up. You were taught the power of prayer. You were taught that if you try hard enough, if you believe hard enough, anything is possible.

Anything.

Stephen King wrote a novel about bringing the dead back to life. He was talking about the buried dead, not the living dead. At least that's what he thought he was talking about.

But the book gave him nightmares because, though he didn't know it, he was writing the truth. He was writing about people in comas.

Would you bring your son back to life, even if you knew he wouldn't be the same son? Would you reach into the grave and snatch him even if he might change a little, if he might change a lot? Would it matter? Isn't it better to have a different son than no son at all? Isn't it better to have a something than nothing?

That's what you think. That's why you squeeze a hand that doesn't squeeze back. That's why you sing the old songs. That's why you entreat unseeing eyes.

Be wary of all the promises made was the message of a New York Times front page article last week. Rehabilitation centers for coma victims in general and New Medico Health Care Systems of Lynn in particular were criticized for glossy brochures and sales pitches that distorted the truth.

But the truth is there is no truth. Can a familiar voice awaken a mind? Can a smell reinvent the past? Does patterning work? Does vanilla on a silent tongue evoke a silent thought? Is there such a thing as neurological rehabilitation?

Patricia Neal, Jim Brady and my own mother all came back from that kind of death that is a coma. The Greenery in Brighton has brought people back too. But thousands never come back.

Be wary of all the promises, yes, but be hopeful, too. That's all you can do. Hope and wait and pray.

Beverly Beckham, whose column appears Tuesday, Friday and Sunday, is the author of "A Gift of Time" (Host Creative Communications).