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Schiavo syndrome.

11 OCTOBER 2009 – After being diagnosed as “comatose” 23 years ago, doctors finally get it right: He was paralyzed. From The Daily Telegraph:

Doctors and nurses deemed him a hopeless case whereby his consciousness was considered “extinct”…When he woke up after the accident he had lost control of his body. “I screamed, but there was nothing to hear,” he says.

“I became a witness to my own suffering as doctors and nurses tried to speak with me until they gave up all hope.”

The neurologist Steven Laureys who led the re-examination of Houben, published a study two months ago claiming vegetative state diagnosed patients are often misdiagnosed.

“Anyone who bears the stamp of ‘unconscious’ just one time hardly ever gets rid of it again,” he said.

It does tend to fall away at the grave, or, as in the case of Terri Schiavo, who was given no grave, when starvation and dehydration have run their course.