Pulling the plug: The toughest decision just got even tougher

It’s the toughest decision anyone will have to make: whether to pull the plug on a loved one on life support.

There’s always the hope someone can recover from a vegetative state. But new research is making the toughest decision even tougher. What if that person can think, hear and feel even if they’re unresponsive? What if they could communicate with us somehow?

On Seattle’s Morning News, things got pretty emotional and personal when Bill, Linda, and Tom looked into a new study that found doctors could detect signs of full consciousness in several people thought to be completely unresponsive and considered in an irreversible vegetative state.

Listen to Bill, Tom and Linda get emotional talking about whether to pull the plug on a loved one

The NY Times reports while doctors have previously detected such brain activity using an expensive high-tech MRI scanner, the new study found the same in three of 16 people with a commonly used lower cost scan known as an EEG that measures brain waves.

“You could imagine the hope and the pain there at the same time,” said co-host Bill Radke.

The news brought anchor Linda Thomas to tears, painfully recalling her personal connection to such a difficult discussion.

“I wish I would have had this a decade ago or so. My grandmother was in this kind of vegetative state for ten years and we couldn’t communicate with her and all she could do was cry. And we had no idea why. And it’s hard to even talk about. And we would visit her and I remember just wondering why,” Thomas recounted.

For co-host Tom Tangney, there’s a sharp divide between him and his wife. Tangney says his wife doesn’t want any heroic measures taken to keep her alive if she’s in a seemingly irreversible, vegetative state.

“I’m just the opposite,” Tangney said. “I would just as soon play that hunch. This is the kind of information that gives me reason to believe there’s so much more going on when we think someone’s not alive or at least in a vegetative state.”

There is hope the research could eventually lead to new ways to actually communicate with those suffering serious brain injury even if they can’t physically do so.

That could also make the toughest decision even tougher.

“Maybe they are communicating, but communicating they don’t want to continue to live in this state,” said Tangney.

By Josh Kerns, MyNorthwest.com reporter