There has been a growing tendency in recent years to withdraw food and water from patients in a so-called vegetative state and starve them or dehydrate them to death. Here is one good reason why it should never happen.Rom Houben, a 20-year-old student and martial arts enthusiast, was paralysed after a car crash in 1983. Doctors in Zolder, Belgium, used internationally accepted tests to assess eye, verbal and motor responses. They concluded that his consciousness was "extinct."
Three years ago his mother Josephine contacted neurologist Dr Steven Laureys, of Liege University. New state-of-the-art scans showed that Rom's brain was functioning in almost completely normal fashion. Although he had lost control of his body, for 23 years he had been conscious of everything that was happening.
He is still disabled, but a device over his bed allows him to read books, and after therapy he can communicate with family and friends via a specially adapted computer.
For 23 years he had no way of letting doctors, nurses, family or friends know that he could hear every word they said. He screamed - but there was no sound.
"I meditated. I dreamed my life away. It was all I could do. Frustration is too small a word to describe what I felt." He studied other patients. He listened to the conversation of the nurses, who were not embarrassed to speak about their boyfriends in front of him, believing he was not aware. "That made me an expert on relationships."
He says he will never forget the day they discovered what was really wrong with him. "It was my second birth. I want to read, talk with my friends via the computer and enjoy my life now."
Rom's mother said she and her husband always believed Rom was aware, but doctors would not believe them. When her husband died in 1997, she went to the hospital to tell Rom. "He shut his eyes. There were no tears, but he understood everything."
Recently, he told his mother via his computer: "Sorry I could not help you, Mummy, when Father went."
