Saturday I took Sean to Chuck's and we all had breakfast together before I had to hit the road to meet someone for coffee and conversation about school-related stuff.
This man is truly a wonder. He had cinnamon rolls ready, the table set and french toast ready to go when we arrived. It was delicious. He kept the kids at his place for a while and then we were going to meet for a local library grand opening after my meeting. We met up at the library and it was crazy. Packed.
We all left there with the plan to meet back up for dinner, but Sean wasn't feeling well so we skipped dinner.
I had marked the meeting for the wrong day on my calendar, so I sat alone in the cafe that morning for a while and sipped on a green tea. It was a new experience and I soaked it in. I liked the atmosphere there and enjoyed watching some of the people sit, and come and go. I've always had a soft spot for cafes because I used to work at one back in the late 80s and early 90s. It was definitely one of my best jobs ever. The people were great, the boss was phenomenal and the food was oh, so good.
Since I wasn't familiar with the area, I got back in my car and drove around to see what there was to see.
As I drove I listened to some programs on public radio. I don't remember the name of it, but one show was about new evidence that people in a coma are really in there.
They did some brain imaging and compared the brain activity to that of a healthy participant. They told the person in a coma to imagine they are playing tennis, to rest, play tennis again, rest, play tennis again.
Their brains lit up just like the healthy people.
The guy providing the information said they can prove they have brain activity, but cannot prove that these people have no activity. He gave an example of someone who is deaf, and what if they are brought into the hospital and we don't know they're deaf and they're in a coma. The same scenario could lead the doctors to believe that deaf person had no brain activity, but it's not that, it's that they can't hear what the doctor is saying to them.
It got me thinking about the implications of this.
What will this information do to all of those people who have made the decision to end a life because they were told the person has no brain activity? And what now? What do we do with this information?
The next radio show was "This American Life" and it focused on the possibility that the recipe for Coca -Cola has been found. What was most interesting to me is that Coke still has cocaine in it, it's just that the coca leaves are de-cocainized in some plant in the U.S. How bizarre to think that a controlled substance is allowed to enter the country in mass quantities for the recipe of a soft drink.
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