So what exactly IS a coma?

[Frozzy]

Partly related to Azazel's "Man wakes up after 19 years in coma" thread.

What exactly is a coma? Does you heart stop beating? How do you get food? Any "REM"? Deep Sleep?

Please answer my query (and no dictionary definitions please )

[Sikander]

This is a comma ====> ,

[DRoseDARs]

Your heart does not stop beating/lungs don't stop taking in air unless your injuries require life-support; you are fed intravenously; a nurse trims your hair, shaves your face (or elsewhere if they don't have job satisfaction and aren't worried about job security... ), sponge baths your body, cleans out your bedpan; it's widely believed you do not dream in a coma, that it is a near-total lack of any major activity. You lose consciousness...then wake up 19 years later. Some evidence suggests that the widely held believe that comatose patients experience nothing actually can process some information gather by their senses: sound, light, touch have illicited some response...but nothing really comes of it. A comatose patient will wake up when they're damn good and ready...if ever. Some die never having woken up; either time or their injuries catch up to them.



Then again, you could actually use Google and do some proper research on the matter instead of being a lazy ass and asking a bunch of gamers in a non-medical gaming forum...

[Q Classic]

like a comma, it's a temporary pause in a long-winded sentence that sometimes--and all too often--serves as a concluding period as well.

[Pekka]

what DRoseDARs said.

[Japher]

Nah, a coma is what happens when you accidently put everyone on Poly OT on perma-ban and can't figure out how to reverse it...

[geeslaka]

Is that what happens to Poly or what happens to the OTers?

[FrustratedPoet]

http://www.neurospinesurgeons.com/Diseases/What%20is%20a%20coma2.htm

The word coma refers to a state of unconsciousness.
This unconsciousness may be very deep, where no amount of stimulation will cause the person to respond. In other cases, however, a person who is in a coma may move, make noise, or respond to pain but is unable to obey simple, one-step commands, such as "hold up two fingers," or "stick out your tongue." The process of recovery from coma is a continuum along which a person gradually regains consciousness.

For people who sustain severe injury to the brain and are comatose, it usually takes longer to recover and sometimes result in permanent impairments.

http://kidshealth.org/kid/health_problems/brain/coma.html

If someone is in a coma, he is unconscious and will not respond to voices, other sounds, or any sort of activity going on around him. He is still alive, but his brain is functioning at its lowest stage of alertness. You can't shake and wake up someone who is in a coma like you can someone who has just fallen asleep.

Comas can be caused by different things, including:
*a severe injury to the head that hurts the brain
*seizures
*infections involving the brain
*brain damage caused by a lack of oxygen for too long
*an overdose (taking too much) of medicine or other drugs
a stroke

When one of these things happens, it can mess up how the brain's cells work. This can hurt the parts of the brain that make someone conscious, and if those parts stop working, the person will stay unconscious.