FOCUS: DONALD HERBERT
Drug cocktail could account for firefighter's awakening
Some attribute change to divine intervention
By GENE WARNER and JAY REY
News Staff Reporters
5/5/2005
Harry Scull Jr./Buffalo News
With her son Thomas, 23, at her side, Linda Herbert discusses the developments, including an experimental drug cocktail, that led to "the incredible experience" of her husband, Donald, speaking to and recognizing family members.
An experimental drug cocktail designed to stimulate his brain helped bring Donald Herbert out of his decade-long stupor, doctors suggested Wednesday.
And a little divine intervention helped, too, physicians said at a lengthy press conference in Erie County Medical Center.
The result left doctors and family members hopeful, but still cautious, that Herbert will continue to make marked improvement from an almost hopeless condition that few patients have escaped.
"As you can imagine, for us to speak to and be recognized by my husband, their father, after 91/2 years, was completely overwhelming," his wife, Linda, said in her first public comments. "We are still trying to cope with this incredible experience."
It all started 21/2 years ago, when Linda Herbert approached Dr. Jamil Ahmed, an ECMC rehabilitation doctor, pleading for some help for her husband, who lives in the Father Baker Manor nursing home in Orchard Park.
"You are the last hope. Nothing is going on," Ahmed recalled her saying.
When Ahmed first examined Herbert, he found him to be "close to a persistent vegetative state."
For two years, Ahmed experimented with various combinations of drugs and therapies to stimulate the Buffalo firefighter, who suffered a profound brain injury when a roof collapsed on him in December 1995. Trapped under the debris, he was deprived of oxygen for up to 10 minutes.
Herbert's condition actually regressed a bit the last couple years, until three months ago, when Ahmed put him on a new combination of drugs.
While refusing to be specific about those drugs, Ahmed told reporters that one is commonly used to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, another to treat Parkinson's disease and a third to treat depression - all drugs used to attack the brain's neurotransmitters.
"I told her maybe it would take six months, and we should wait for that," he said.
On Saturday, Herbert made a quantum leap in his ability to communicate, recognizing family and friends, following commands - and even counting to 200 out loud.
Doctors don't know of any brain-injured patients who have made such a dramatic improvement so many years later.
"There hasn't ever been one who's woken up this far out," said Dr. James Czyrny, clinical director of rehabilitation medicine at ECMC.
Ahmed attributed the dramatic turnaround to a combination of the drugs and God's help.
Was it a miracle?
"I can't explain it any other way," said Dr. Eileen Reilly, who treats Herbert at Father Baker Manor. "It's phenomenal, it really is."
Since his 16-hour marathon of interacting with others, through 6 a.m. Sunday, Herbert has slept much of the time, experiencing "infrequent moments of lucidity," Linda Herbert said in her brief prepared statement.
"Although these subsequent periods of lucidity were not of the quality of Saturday, they were still of a degree which was considerably higher than before Saturday," she said, sitting next to the couple's second oldest son, Thomas, 23.
Donald Herbert thought he had been "away" for only three months, not 91/2 years, his wife said.
"My son Nicholas, who had just turned 4 at the time of the accident, is just thrilled to have heard his father call him by name, hug him and speak with him," she said. ". . . My husband did not believe that it was Nicholas at first, because he thought Nick was still 3 years old."
The news conference, which drew a sizable national media contingent, showed how difficult it is to understand and explain the severity of a brain-injured person. During and after the press conference, various physicians politely disagreed about whether Herbert actually had been in a persistent vegetative state.
Over the 91/2 years since the fire, Herbert's condition had fluctuated. He emerged from a coma 21/2 months later, even talking a little bit, before his condition deteriorated again in 1997, leaving him only "minimally responsive" to what was going on around him, doctors have said.
And no one even came close Wednesday to
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