Drugs help revive brain-damaged NY fireman—doctor
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The wife of a brain-damaged firefighter said it was “overwhelming” to hear her husband speak after nearly 10 years of silence, a startling revival his doctor credited to a new drug treatment.
Donald Herbert, 43, suddenly snapped to attention on Saturday after years of sitting silently in a wheelchair at his nursing home. He stunned the nursing home staff by asking where his wife, Linda, was.
Linda Herbert was summoned to the Father Baker Manor nursing home, where the injured firefighter engaged family and friends in a 14-hour visit. On Wednesday, Linda Herbert told a news conference that hearing her husband speak again was “overwhelming.”
“He thought he had been away for three months,” she said. “He was very surprised to find it was 9-1/2 years. Our son Nicholas was 4-1/2 at the time and he was thrilled to have his father hug and speak to him. He didn’t know it was Nick at first.”
Herbert was injured in a December 1995 apartment blaze in Buffalo when the roof crashed down as he searched for victims. Herbert went without oxygen for about six minutes before he was rescued.
Dr. Jamil Ahmed, a physician at Erie County Medical Center, credited Herbert’s startling revival to a new drug program he started three months ago, along with the Herbert family’s unswerving belief that he would recover.
Ahmed said Herbert was “almost in a persistent vegetative state” when he began treating him 2-1/2 years ago.
“I was surprised that he was talking, and talking so sensibly,” Ahmed said about Saturday’s turnaround. “He recognized people. He was talking with his son. He counted from 1 to 200.”
Ahmed would not identify the drugs Herbert receives in order to protect his privacy, but noted they included drugs used to treat attention deficit disorder and Parkinson’s disease, along with an anti-depressant.
“It was a question of what types of medications would work in different ways with the brain, work on different parts of the brain,” he said.
Since his breakthrough, Herbert has spent a lot of time sleeping, Linda Herbert said, but has “had several periods of lucidity and that gives us hope. They weren’t to the degree of Saturday, but still of a quality that was there on Saturday.”
Dr. Eileen Reilly, Herbert’s physician at the nursing home, said: “Today he had two hours of activity and he was speaking in sentences. He does have some way to go, but it’s still wonderful.”
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