End Stages of Coma: Clearview Key Stage for Recovery

End Stages of Coma: Chris Part Four

Chris was at the end stages of coma when it was “decided” that she needed to be transferred again. (For a classification of the end stages of coma “stages of coma” see the Rancho Los Amigos coma scale at http://www.waiting.com/rancholosamigos.html). Chris’s Mom:

She was at Sacred Heart and they were kind of at a standstill. They had a meeting with me and said that they could no longer do anything with her because they felt she was not improving fast enough to stay at their facility.

She was at the combative stage. She was aware of what was going on, she just couldn’t speak. Couldn’t take care of herself, she was very combative. But they weren’t, she was not progressing fast enough for them, her speech, her occupational, her physical therapy. It, she was just not progressing fast enough for them to keep her there.

The pressure to transfer her came from the treatment center, not her insurance company. The insurance company never denied her anything that first year. At Clearview Treatment Center in Juneau, Wisconsin, things did change at the end stages of coma. www.clearviewtreatment.com/

We still continued to go there every weekend and still worked with her. The people there were wonderful. They worked hard with her. I guess nothing is fast enough for you then. You just want everything to be better. I didn’t know what kind of care to expect (in Milwaukee), but I just knew I didn’t care for it. In Juneau, they were, they were wonderful people. They worked with her, they were hardworking, it was non-stop. They seemed very caring.

At Clearview, she worked with a neuropsychologist, a speech pathologist, physical therapist, occupational therapist and a vocational therapist./

Every weekend when we went there. It was like she worked hard with them all week and we drilled her on the weekend.

Chris does remember some of this therapy at the end stages of coma?:

Yeah, like in toward the beginning she would have me name characters in these five cards and it was hard to even remember what they were sometimes.

Having to relearn everything made her feel like she was being treated like a child, which would make her mad. But all the therapies helped. She relearned to walk.

I just kept upgrading. I (started in a) wheelchair, then a walker, then I went to a single cane, which is what they sent me home with.

Her Mom:

Once she was out of her coma, she worked hard with them. I saw progress. I could actually see her improving. It made so you couldn’t wait to get there on the weekend and work with her to see, what else she was remembering, what else she was learning.

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