MAN WHO AWOKE FROM COMA RAISES NEW QUESTIONS ABOUT DEATH
OF TERRI SCHIAVO
Little Rock, AR, Jul. 07, 2006 (CNA ) - The case of Terry Wallis,
an Arkansas man who suddenly woke up from a 19-year long coma, has
raised new questions about the death of Terri Schiavo, who died
last year after a court ordered her feeding tube to be
disconnected. Wallis fell into his coma in 1984 after a serious car
accident. At the time he was 19.
According to LifeSiteNews.com, the doctors who have studied the
Wallis case have published their initial conclusions in the Journal
of Clinical Investigation. The report explains that during the car
accident Walls nerve connections in his brain were severed,
putting him in a minimally conscious state and rendering him a
quadriplegic. A young husband with a newborn child, Wallis was
considered a hopeless case, especially considering that his family
could not pay the $120,000 needed to consult a neurologist about
any possibility of recovery. However in 2003, during one of the
regular visits of his mother, who had regularly visited him at the
Rehabilitation Centre in Mountain View, Arkansas, he made what
seemed a sudden recovery, and spoke mom, his first word in 19
years.
Imaging expert Henning Voss and neurologist Nicholas Schiff of the
Weil Medical College at the University of Cornell believe Wallis
brain rewired itself and slowly re-grew the nerve connections
that were devastated as a result of his accident.
Doctors at Wallis rehabilitation center believe the recovery is
due in part to visits by his family, which could have acted as a
kind of mental therapy for his recovery.
He now seems exactly like his old self, says Jerry Wallis,
Terrys father. Over the 19 years of Terrys coma, both Jerry and
his mother Angilee had doubts at some time or another about whether
or not it was better for Terry to be alive. However, now both are
glad they never caved into those doubts. Since then they have seen
their son make strides in his recovery with the ambition of walking
for his daughter. He very often tells us how glad he is to be
alive, says Terrys father.
LifeSiteNews.com noted that the Wallis case stands in stark
opposition to the case of Terri Schindler-Schiavo, who received no
therapy from her philandering husband after her 1990 collapse. She
was instead dehydrated to death by court order in March 2005.
Although some doctors claim that Terri Schiavo could not have made
Terry Wallis recovery since she was in a persistent vegetative
state (PVS), witnesses such as former nurse Carla Iyer maintained
that with therapy, Schiavo, who said words like, mommy, help me,
could have indeed recovered over time.
In a BBC interview Dr. Ralf Clauss, a scientist in nuclear medicine
and one of the drug researchers, stated that, For every damaged
area of the brain, there is a dormant area, which seems to be a
sort of protective mechanism. The damaged tissue is dead, theres
nothing you can do, he explained. But its the dormant areas
which wake up.
