A long time ago, ...
I was an orderly at a hospital in rural NC. We had a 37 year old male patient come in with a massive stroke. He was unresponsive, but breathing. This was back before HMO's, so he stayed on at the hospital for roughly a year. The whole time, unresponsive. He was breathing, but he was a turn every two hours, feeding tube, etc. patient. His wife visited frequently. Then, iirc almost a year after his admission she came in and sat with him for about 30 minutes. She left crying. After she left, the patient rose up in his bed briefly and then moaned horribly. Later I found out that his wife came to tell him she'd met some one else. We were encouraged by his movement because this is the first time any of us had seen him move and I'd been shaving him every day for almost a year. (Most of the time his pupils didn't respond to light stimulus). He eventually got to the point where he could move his head and shoulders as well as swallow, so we could feed him with a spoon. He was discharged to a nursing home. I still remember this guy 25 years later. I know his name and I'll never forget his reaction after his wife left.
I, like the rest of the medical staff, would have bet the ranch that he would never make any sort of recovery - the damage to his brain was extensive because of the stroke. But he recovered enough to respond to people, eat and he did regain some movement. It wasn't much of a life, but he was still alive.
