Vegetative

[Note: Each time I go over this post in my head I see places that could be worded and explained better.  Also realized I may have had more backwards and wrong than correct.]

    I'm adding this post having no experience with it.  Also have no way to directly test it for any basis in reality.  So understandably this post is on someone else's behalf.

    When a person experiences extreme trauma - a car accident is an example - sometimes the damage to the mind can leave the person in a persistent vegetative state.

    I think a description of a person being cared for in this state is something like "aware but not conscious". [Note: I had it backwards. It's actually more like "awake but without awareness".]

Factual link: https://brainfoundation.org.au/disorders/vegetative-state

   Another way to describe it may be a dissociation.  The conscious and unconscious parts of the mind don't work together to form a whole mind like they did before .

   We don't have much in the way of health care or medicine to use for this though.  The condition can abruptly resolve itself or last for a lifetime.

   It's been several months ago that a phrase popped into my head minus a voice saying it.  I don't know if it was the first time I'd heard it.  It might have been something I'd read or been told sometime in the past but it was:

   "Time is the only thing that separates us."

   I instantly knew something that it meant but missed the meaning on the opposite side of things.

   There's nothing scientific I can point to for backing it up.  But it aligns nicely with the meaning I noticed first.  The part I missed is that:

   No matter how bad a dissociation is - even one that results in a persistent vegetative state - both parts of the mind are still there.  But time that is needed for them to....  [have no idea what the correct way is to phrase this so gonna make it up]...  let's say "shift awareness" increases with the severity of the dissociation.

   When awareness shifts instantly and transparently we perceive a single mind.  With any degree of association the ability to shift is hindered.  A person in this state may be able to perceive it as a lag and even be aware that they aren't a whole mind anymore.

   I think I got it close this time.

   Can always update this again and note my mistakes.

   [Note:  The idea below is probably wrong so I'm taking credit for it.  I wasn't paying attention when I should have been or I started writing this before I knew enough]

   The idea passed to me is that someone in this state needs to be taught how to create something out of nothing.  To visualize restoring something to contain and focus (not the right words but I'm typing quicker than I can wait to become aware) what is required to restore consciousness.

   When I first started realizing my mind was "turning against me" i kept trying to reach lower down to gain control to turn it off.  There was nothing to reach down to in my mind so I kept visualizing reach down and shaping buttons, levers, and knobs I could somehow use.  And shape them out of the nothing that was there.

   That may have no practical value in this case but was something to consider.