In a story that brought to mind the disturbing case of Terri Schiavo, the BBC and the Daily Mail reported how a paralyzed man on life support made an eye blinking plead for life despite his mother, father and two daughters all agreeing it was time to 'unplug' him and letting nature take it's course. Richard Rudd, 43 was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident in October of last year and was left paralyzed and completely non-responsive. To quote from the Daily Mail article,
"Staff at the NCCU were due to switch off Richard's life support machine three weeks later when, incredibly, he began to show signs of communicating by moving his eyes.
And despite having told family members previously that he would not want to live in such a state, Richard answered 'yes' when asked if he wanted to live or die - with a blink."
While Mr Rudd is not expected to make a full recovery, he's been moved closer to his home and his father who had originally said that his son would not his life support continued made a remarkable observation which I'll quote here:
"We all sit round and talk in the pub or at work and say 'if this happened to me, turn the machine off'," he said.
"It's all hypothetical and you don't know until it happens to yourself. As a family and friends, if that person can't decide for themselves, sometimes you feel that you can decide for them.
"Because, in theory, you think you can never live in that situation, you sometimes put that judgment onto somebody else.
"At the end of the day, you probably have no right to do that.
"But now Richard's in the situation where that's actually happened. It's real life - it's not pretend. He is in that situation.
"The will to live takes over."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/106077...