This is an amazing story.  Even though it's long, make sure you read the 
whole thing.

Rayna

"We have always been told there is no recovery from persistent 
vegetative state - doctors can only make a sufferer's last days as 
painless as possible. But is that really the truth? Across three 
continents, severely brain-damaged patients are awake and talking after 
taking ... a sleeping pill. And no one is more baffled than the GP who 
made the breakthrough. Steve Boggan witnesses these 'strange and 
wonderful' rebirths"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,,1870279,00.html


"Heidi Greven, who is now 21, was starved of oxygen to her brain at 
birth. Her mother, Babs, says she used to sit in silence, locked inside 
her own head, never communicating and looking terribly unhappy. When I 
meet Heidi, she is walking around, curious about everything. She 
examines the shorthand in my notebook. Although too shy to speak (she 
will always be brain damaged), she jokes with Nel. At home, she now 
chats with her parents.

"I'll never forget the first time she was given the medication," says 
Babs. "It was in July 2002. After 10 to 15 minutes it was like a curtain 
being lifted from her eyes. I couldn't believe it. She suddenly started 
looking around and fiddling with magazines. Then she went outside the 
door and looked into the other rooms in the surgery. She found a 
portable radio and put it up to her shoulder and began listening to it. 
Beforehand, she would just sit there doing nothing."

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