Earlier this week (Jan 2015), Dr. Alexander was invited to weigh in on a groundbreaking new study that shows coma patients actually heal faster and more completely when they hear their loved ones voices telling them loving things. The sample size was small, but it’s extremely promising, and the results were strongly in favor of introducing a new protocol for coma patients.
Dr. Alexander himself may have benefited from his family doing this during his illness. Of course, his family hadn’t read any studies saying they should talk to him and pray for him–they just did it. As it turns out, that was probably the smartest thing they could have done.
He was unconscious, of course, so he couldn’t hear his family speaking to him during the coma, but as he describes in the interview, he remembers his sisters fighting to bring back his memory when he awoke, dazed and amnesiac.
“My sisters’ role in my healing came after I initially awoke from coma, when my brain was still extremely compromised and I was in and out of awareness of my surroundings in the ICU,” he told me. “I believe that those stories played a major role in my rapid recovery of brain functions.”
You can watch that interview about the new coma study here.
Sound has been proven to be a valuable tool in communicating with comatose patients. It is documented that patients still hear. Music can be used also and hopefully more research will be done on its benefits for the comatose.
In the book he said that early on he saw children & animals playing below him, I wondered if he saw them only the 1 time.