but it's gone now.

Patient trapped in a 23-year 'coma' was conscious all along

A man thought by doctors to be in a vegetative state for 23 years was actually conscious the whole time, it was revealed last night. Student Rom Houben was misdiagnosed after a car crash left him totally paralysed He had no way of letting experts, family or friends know he could hear every word they said.

'I screamed, but there was nothing to hear,' said Mr Houben, now 46.

Doctors used a range of coma tests, recognised worldwide, before reluctantly concluding that his consciousness was 'extinct'.

But three years ago, new hi-tech scans showed his brain was still functioning almost completely normally.

His case has only just been revealed in a scientific paper released by the man who 'saved' him, top neurological expert Dr Steven Laureys.

'Medical advances caught up with him,' said Dr Laureys, who believes there may be many similar cases of false comas around the world.

The disclosure will also renew the right-to-die debate over whether people in comas are truly unconscious.

Mr Houben, a former martial arts enthusiast, was paralysed in 1983.

Doctors in Zolder, Belgium, used the internationally accepted Glasgow Coma Scale to assess his eye, verbal and motor responses, but each time he was graded incorrectly. Only a re-evaluation of his case at the University of Liege discovered that he had lost control of his body but was still fully aware of what was happening.

He is never likely to leave hospital, but as well as his computer he now has a special device above his bed which lets him read books while lying down.

Mr Houben said: 'I shall never forget the day when they discovered what was truly wrong with me - it was my second birth.

'I want to read, talk with my friends via the computer and enjoy my life now that people know I am not dead.'

FULL ARTICLE @ Daily Mail

I'll just leave this here.

I'm going to be so glad when this week is over.
Seriously, fucking...next year I am NOT going to let myself fall behind in my work. Never again.

I'm meant to be up in 4.5 hours, HAHAHAHAHAH. It's only a half day, I'll be out by 12, but still...yuck.

I wouldn't ban a thing. Not a single fucking thing. If I ever land a job in a school library and get faced with this kind of question I'll answer "you don't like it? Go homeschool your kid and GTFO."

via wtf_omgz

You know that old wives tale, about how eating too much sugar before bed can cause nightmares and shit?

I think there might be some truth to that.

Dream #1 involved me eating mouldy liquorice donuts found in the musty cupboard of an friend's old place, only to violently vomit them up all over the walls. So vivid that I woke up with stomach aches. No liquorice vomit though.

Dream #2 involved me running around the levels of Mario 64. I was Cook from Skins* trying to bring his friends back from another hellish dimension. Also very vivid. I had head spins and vertigo after waking from that one.

Today was almost a waste. Trekked into the city and waited at the City library for my class to show up only to find that the excursion was next week. Nursed bruised ego by reading New Scientist. Reading Gaia's evil twin: Is life its own worst enemy? by Peter Ward cheered me up. New Scientist wants you to pay to read the full article but honestly fuck that. Melange has the full article in their entry Gaia or Medea: is Earth driven by maintaining life or fostering self-destruction? along with some interesting bits of their own.

Think dream #1 was an omen of some sorts. A vegan fudge ball I bought from a cafe turned out to be off. It was sour and oddly squishy. Cafe just lost itself a customer. I don't believe in second chances - food poisoning/gastro totalled my digestive system years ago. Shame, I liked that cafe.

Ambled over to the NGV to check out their prints collection. Rather boring except for two pieces that sent me into gigglefits.

Map of an englishman (2004), Grayson Perry
I like it because I have a thing for maps and it has lots of naughty words.

There was another cool piece I wanted to share but my Google-Fu seems to be failing me tonight.
Chocolate time.

*The third series of Skins is fucking TERRIBLE. How can the people who made Shameless live with themselves after churning out that load of shit?

The Hanged Woman (Jose luis Merino, 1973)
film stills

5 day heatwave.
5 days above 30°C.
And it's not even summer yet, fuuuuuuuuuuck.
Image closely resembles me in my current state.

My modem hates the heat, keeps conking out every 5 seconds. I swear, if it dies during this heatwave there will be Hell to pay.

It's 3:30am. I've got a baby shower to go to in 8.5 hours. With my shaven head, spotty skin, and complete lack of formal/neat clothes I'm sure to blend in with the ladies in their pastels and capris...

Usually I wouldn't care about these sorts of things. The people holding the shower are long-time friends of the family, and they're wonderful, but as for everyone else? I don't know, the idea of ugly me showing up with my nice and shiny sister and mum, trying to make small talk knowing fully well everyone's looking at me as if I'm about to steal their bag or something....If I don't go though my family will go ape at me, I'll get lectured about how I need to get over how I look, I look fine, blah blah blah.

I look ugly. My skin's very spotty and pale from stress and humid weather, my hair's ugly as fuck, nothing fits me because I've somehow dropped more weight...I look like a junkie. And I'm really, really not in the mood for people and their bullshit right now: Darling you look fine, blah blah bullshit bullshit no I don't I look sketchy as hell and you know it now fuck off and let me be.

Fucking...