" Diagnosis, more so than actual treatment, could mean the difference between life and death, because a grim diagnosis can preclude therapeutic efforts and prompt doctors and families to remove the patient from life support."

" Doctors often fret that families have unrealistic expectations for their loved ones who have suffered severe brain damage. Hollywood doesn't help. In the movies, patients with perfect hair and freshly applied make-up awake from comas in a radiant shower of sunbeams, speaking eloquently with no signs of wear, much like Sleeping Beauty."

" In realty, coma patients have bedsores and muscle wasting; they are disoriented, and their awakening often takes weeks, with only a few hours of awareness a day. Often patients will have lasting brain damage and will have difficulty speaking or walking. Neurologists at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, "

" of 30 movies from 1970 to 2004 that depicted comas. They found only two movies to be reasonably accurate. "

" A coma is only a transitional period after brain damage, lasting no more than a few weeks. During this time, the patient cannot be woken; the patient's eyes are closed, and brain patterns reveal a type of sleep similar to that induced by anesthesia, with no "

" Patients transition from the coma into one of three basic states, depending on the extent of the injury. Some patients die. Some ""

"" with varying degrees of brain damage. And others slip into a vegetative state. This is a gray area of either minimal or no "

" . Those in a persistent vegetative state remain unaware of their surroundings and have little chance of improving. But patients in a minimally conscious vegetative state can recover more consciousness, even years later."

" Patients in vegetative states pass daily through normal sleep cycles. Their eyes can open, and they have some reflective movement. Families often falsely perceive the patient as being conscious but merely unable to vocalize, as if locked inside the body."

" Medical archives abound with stories of patients awaking after years. Terry Wallis is one famous example; after 19 years in a vegetative state, Wallis began talking in 2003, albeit with difficulty. The hope was that Terri Schiavo would someday wake up, too."

" The difference, though, is that Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state, while those patients who recover partially were in a minimally conscious state and had some degree of awareness of their surroundings. "

" Sounds clear cut, but a study from London in the 1990s found that about a third of patient thought to be
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