What to do if you are with someone who is in a coma?

This website has been set up as a result of an event:

In October 2011, a traffic accident severely injured one of my children. Except for a lot of bone fractures and injuries, he also went into a deep coma. He's transferred by helicopter at night to the University Hospital in Toulouse, 150 miles away from our home. My wife and I followed him, staying at his side every day, for weeks in a row. At the beginning, doctors keep pointing out to us the life-threatening danger our son is in, telling us to prepare for the worst.

We refuse to leave it at this, tune our minds positive and try every trick in the book. We are with him as much as we can, touch him, talk, sing, massage, tell, play movies and music, caress, sit silent, breathe, sigh, make noises, we fight and fight and our son seems to be fighting with us. Slowly, very slowly, we see him surfacing from his coma at long last, but not safe of consequences like confusion, problems with speech, memory loss. Next is a rehabilitation program of unpredictable length and result.

During our desperate search for information about our possible part in all of this, at first we could only find reflective and scientific reports, which all had a very impersonal, pathological approach, considering comatose persons as "patients", therefore also treating and judging them that way. According to our own experiences and learning process, I came to a different vision of supporting and helping someone who is in a coma.

If you find yourself in your life in this kind of “ordeal”, the information you find on this website will be invaluable for you.

Good luck

Arno VOOGD