The Awakening: Sarah Scantlin's 20-Year Journey From Coma to Silence to Breakthrough

[David_Paul]

DeNeen L. Brown
7/24/00
Washington Post

Up Highway 96, sometimes called the State Fair Freeway, past the cliche of wheat fields, the thicket of signs proclaiming a right to life, take a left on 23rd Avenue and you will find a very plain nursing home, where something happened that wasn’t supposed to happen.

Defied man-made logic.

Resisted complicated scientific analysis.

Couldn’t be explained by some of the smartest brains in the world.

Still can’t.

Sarah, lying in this bed nearly 20 years, brain-damaged, blank, speechless, immobile, staring out the same window. Couldn’t talk to the people who came to talk to her. Couldn’t say change the channel. Couldn’t say shut up. Couldn’t say scratch that itch . . .

Sarah, who 20 years ago was run down by a drunk driver, the impact throwing her into the path of a second car that slammed her forehead and left her so damaged nobody understood how her body survived, let alone her mind.

Sarah. They didn’t know that as she lay in that bed, with her mouth gaping, face wretched in a silent agony, body atrophying, feet gnarling, fists clenched across her chest, tight, as if she were afraid, big, blue eyes staring out like she was trapped . . . They didn’t know that as she lay there, something in her brain was mending.

People came and people went. Some grew up and some grew old. Some gave up and went away, guiltily diving into their own lives as Sarah Scantlin lay in that bed. Never believing she would do anything more than lie there and stare into oblivion, or wherever it is that brain-damaged people go, hovering between now and then, nowhere and somewhere, just out of reach.

Then six months ago, Sarah came back.

Sarah spoke.

washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/23/AR2005072301121_pf.html

 

[Fitz]

Sarah’s journey is really amazing. I am hoping that the whole story does get made into a movie. This is a life story that everyone needs to comtemplate and understand.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Praise God.

 

[MichaelTDoyle]

Why does the Post add this?

Terri Schiavo’s case was different. She was in a “vegetative state,” when only the brain stem, which controls involuntary functions such as heartbeat, works.

The Scantlins were never interested in Sarah’s story getting entangled in Terri Schiavo’s.

“They are not remotely connected,” James Scantlin says. "We turned down Larry King. And Fox. The religious media said she woke from a coma after 20 years. She was in a coma one month. . . . The Schiavos called us. We didn’t return the calls.

---

Heartwarming story with a black lie in its heart. AFAIK the vegatative state was never proven.

 

[KathleenElsie]

MichaelTDoyle:

Why does the Post add this?

Terri Schiavo’s case was different. She was in a “vegetative state,” when only the brain stem, which controls involuntary functions such as heartbeat, works.

The Scantlins were never interested in Sarah’s story getting entangled in Terri Schiavo’s.

“They are not remotely connected,” James Scantlin says. "We turned down Larry King. And Fox. The religious media said she woke from a coma after 20 years. She was in a coma one month. . . . The Schiavos called us. We didn’t return the calls.

---

Heartwarming story with a black lie in its heart. AFAIK the vegatative state was never proven.

Praise God for this womans recovery. But, the media had no right to link this with other things. The family and Sarah should have their wishes followed as well as their privacy,