Coma

The blockbuster bestseller that kickstarted a new genre--the medical thriller--is now available in trade paperback for the first time. They called it "minor surgery," but Nancy Greenly, Sean Berman and a dozen others--all admitted to Boston Memorial Hospital for routine procedures--were victims of the same inexplicable, hideous tragedy on the operating table. They never woke up. Susan Wheeler is a third-year medical student working as a trainee at Boston Memorial Hospital. Two patients during her residency mysteriously go into comas immediately after their operations due to complications from anesthesia. Susan begins to investigate the causes behind both of these alarming comas and discovers the oxygen line in Operating Room 8 has been tampered with to induce carbon monoxide poisoning. Then Susan discovers the evil nature of the Jefferson Institute, an intensive care facility where patients are suspended from the ceiling and kept alive until they can be harvested for healthy organs. Is she a participant in--or a victim of--a large-scale black market dealing in human organs?

They called it “minor surgery,” but Nancy Greenly, Sean Berman, and a dozen others—all admitted to Boston Memorial Hospital for routine procedures were victims of the same inexplicable, hideous tragedy on the operating table. They never woke up. . . .

This revised and expanded second edition discusses the assessment and treatment of patients recovering from coma and disorders of consciousness. Besides diagnostic, prognostic and ethical issues, this book describes well-established techniques and procedures, and also techniques under development. New chapters include consciousness theories, issues relating to long-term care, and neuromodulation treatments. Coma and Disorders of Consciousness, Second Edition is a comprehensive review of the field for clinicians and researchers, regardless of whether they are already familiar with the difficult but exciting field of disorders of consciousness.

When Carl awakens from a coma after being attacked on a subway train, life around him feels unfamiliar, even strange. He arrives at his best friend's house without remembering how he got there; he seems to be having an affair with his secretary, which is pleasant but surprising. He starts to notice distortions in his experience, strange leaps in his perception of time. Is he truly reacting with the outside world, he wonders, or might he be terribly mistaken? So begins a dark psychological drama that raises questions about the the human psyche, dream versus reality, and the boundaries of consciousness. As Carl grapples with his predicament, Alex Garland - author of The Beach and the screenplay for 28 Days Later, plays with conventions and questions our assumptions about the way we exist in the world, even as it draws us into the unsettling and haunting book about a lost suitcase and a forgotten identity.

On a snowy Friday night in 1979, just hours after making love for the first time, Richard's girlfriend, high school senior Karen Ann McNeil, falls into a coma. Nine months later she gives birth to their daughter, Megan. As Karen sleeps through the next seventeen years, Richard and their circle of friends reside in an emotional purgatory, passing through a variety of careers—modeling, film special effects, medicine, demolition—before finally reuniting on a conspiracy-driven super-natural television series. But real life grows as surreal as their TV show as Richard and his friends await Karen's reawakening . . . and the subsequent apocalypse.

Offering a new view and a fascinating understanding of coma states, this hope-filled work explains technology-driven insights and describes practices with which family members and caregivers can help promote recovery. Exciting scientific discoveries are validating what coma therapists Dr. Pierre Morin and Dr. Gary Reiss have been teaching for years: that coma patients' awareness is both detailed and complex, and their chances of significant recovery is much greater than previously thought. Inside Coma: A New View of Awareness, Healing, and Hope describes practical, body-centered ways of communicating with coma patients, showing family members and caregivers how to enter the patient's inner world of experience to engage their will and power to heal. Advocating for a new, ethical sensitivity that gives patients in remote and comatose states a right to exist, the authors explain the newest developments in the cutting-edge treatment of coma patients through a mind-body approach to medicine and healing, placing these developments in the context of the changing field of consciousness studies. They teach, challenge, and inspire readers to a new level of understanding, compassion, and intervention, offering basic tools with which health-care professionals and family members alike can begin this remarkably effective work.

What occurs within coma? What does the coma patient experience? How does the patient perceive the world outside of coma, if at all? The simple answer to these questions is that we don't know. Yet the sheer volume of literary and media texts would have us believe that we do. Examining representations of coma and brain injury across a variety of texts, this book investigates common tropes and linguistic devices used to portray the medical condition of coma, giving rise to universal mythologies and misconceptions in the public domain. Matthew Colbeck looks at how these texts represent, or fail to represent, long-term brain injury, drawing on narratives of coma survivors that have been produced and curated through writing groups he has run over the last 10 years. Discussing a diverse range of cultural works, including novels by Irvine Welsh, Stephen King, Tom McCarthy and Douglas Coupland, as well as film and media texts such as The Sopranos, Kill Bill, Coma and The Walking Dead, Colbeck provides an explanation for our fascination with coma. With a proliferation of misleading stories of survival in the media and in literature, this book explores the potential impact these have upon our own understanding of coma and its victims.

• Examines the experiences of those who have survived comas • Demonstrates how a key element of the brain is switched off by coma-inducing sedatives, allowing the mind to break free from the body • Shares proven alternatives to medically-induced coma that are safer for treating critically ill patients and kinder for the patients and their families Every day around the world, thousands of people are placed in medically-induced comas. For some coma survivors, the experience is an utter blank. Others lay paralyzed, aware of everything around them but unable to move, speak, or even blink. Many experience alternate lives spanning decades, lives they grieve once awakened. Some encounter ultra-vivid nightmares, while others undergo a deep, spiritual oneness with the Universe or say they have glimpsed the Afterlife. Examining the beautiful and disturbing experiences of those who have survived comas, Alan and Beverley Pearce explore the mysterious levels of consciousness this near-death experience unlocks. They demonstrate how a key element of the brain is switched off by coma-inducing sedatives, allowing the mind to break free from the body and experience a greater expansion of consciousness. Revealing the dangers of deep sedation and other intensive care procedures, the authors show how comas are unnecessary more often than not and that many coma survivors go on to suffer lasting cognitive and physical harm. Exploring proven alternatives to medically-induced coma, they share tried and tested protocols that are safer for critically ill patients and kinder for the patients and their families. Showing how we can avoid the suffering caused by comas, this book reveals the wide variety of conscious states that can arise during comas, both positive and negative, and how accepting the reality of these experiences is crucial not only to the recovery of coma survivors, but also to the field of consciousness and NDE studies.