"I was only my consciousness..."

You want a story of gratitude? Check out this story in the Jerusalem Post of Ron Houben, who was in a vegetative state for 20 years until a new scanning procedure discovered that he had all his wits about him. Now that he is barely able to communicate, he's grateful enough to call it his "second birth."

In 1983, at age 23, Ron Houben was involved in a car accident that left him completely paralyzed and in a coma. The young Belgian had been a martial arts expert and engineering student; now doctors diagnosed his condition as persistent vegetative state. His eyes could move; he had periods of sleep and wakefulness, but he appeared unconscious; unable to reason or respond.
In reality, Houben knew what was happening around him but had no way of signaling he was a sentient being. He could not even blink an eyelid.
His mother's intuition led her to believe that her son was not a hopeless case, and over the years she took him to the United States five times for sophisticated tests.
She eventually connected with Dr. Steven Laureys of Belgium's Coma Science Group, who put Ron through a PET scan that detects energy given off by a radioactive element injected into the patient. The exam, which was not available when Houben was first diagnosed, showed that he probably could think and reason after all, even if he was immobile and uncommunicative.
This stunning discovery, made three years ago, has only now come to light. Laureys came up with a computer-assisted touch screen that allows Houben, now 46, to use the partial mobility he has in one finger of his right hand to type out his thoughts - with the help of an aide.
"I shall never forget the day when they discovered what was truly wrong with me," he wrote afterward. "It was my second birth. I was shouting, but no one could hear me."
Houben now sits in a wheelchair, his body twisted to one side as if in suspended animation, but his eyes are open and he can now "speak" via computer. He wrote that he maintained his sanity by dreaming himself away. "I was only my consciousness and nothing else."
His mother insists he is not depressed, that he is an optimist and that he wants to get the most out of his life.