In my career as a nurse, I’ve seen some things that made me wonder about this. Many years ago, I was working in the trauma ICU of our large county hospital. I reported in for duty, and the outgoing nurse for a patient to whom I was assigned filled me in on this new arrival. She had been driving with her two children and was involved in a terrible accident. Her infant daughter was killed, she had severe brain trauma and was in a vegetative state, not responding to any stimuli, but her little son had miraculously survived. The nurse told me at bedside that the young son had begged to see his sister, so his Dad took him to the funeral home, where the child was allowed to hold his sister one last time. I said, “Oh, God. The little boy was holding his dead sister??” At this moment, the mom’s ICP monitor (measures intracranial pressure) went sky high. Horrified, I held my hand to my mouth and said “Oh no.” The nurse shook her head and said, “that’s just coincidence. She’s definitely completely unresponsive.”
I was completely unconvinced of this. From that day forward, I always assumed that some part of an “unresponsive” patient might still be aware on some level of things being done to and around them. Any time I touched an unconscious patient I would tell them who I was and what I was about to do, even if it was just turning them or starting an IV or other such action. I didn’t ever again want to violate someone’s dignity or treat them as a body rather than a human being. Some nurses and doctors rolled their eyes at me when I would do this, but I didn’t care. I never forgot that young mother (and sadly never knew what happened to her after she was transferred from the ICU to a long term care center for patients on ventilators who were nonresponsive). I’ve never forgotten that poor family.