Woman boosted by 'miracle drug' December 08 2007 - IOL
Godisamang Rapotapi's eyes slowly focus on her sister. Then her gaze shifts to her elderly mother, seated alongside her bed.
This may seem like an ordinary and unremarkable moment, but to the family of the brain-damaged Godisamang, watching this is pure joy.
"Just look at her," beams Maria, her smiling 69-year-old mother.
"She looks at you now when you're talking and walking around. She never used to do that before. I'm telling you, she is watching everything. Maybe she can even hear us talk."
It was in June 2004 when Godisamang, a Pick n Pay manager, underwent what should have been a routine hysterectomy at a private clinic.
Instead, she emerged brain-damaged and in a coma-like permanent vegetative state (PVS), spending six months in intensive care. No one at the clinic has told her family what happened to her.
Now bedridden in her parents' home in Orlando East, Soweto, Godisamang (47) is fed intravenously and forced to use a catheter. She hasn't uttered a word since the operation - and until recently, she didn't lift her eyes beyond a cupboard in her bedroom.
Then, last year, a cousin stumbled across an article about Stilnox in a doctor's waiting rooms. "It was about this sleeping tablet that was helping brain-damaged people," recalls Kedibone, Godisamang's sister.
"She was so excited, she wanted to buy the magazine from the doctor."
Stilnox, an ordinary sleeping tablet, has been saluted globally as a medical breakthrough in the treatment of brain injuries. Around 60 percent of the almost 400 people taking Stilnox to treat their PVS, stroke, cerebral palsy and traumatic head injuries have experienced significant advances in their speech, motor functions and concentration.
Like them, Maria has seen a considerable improvement in her daughter's condition. She takes the tablet three times a day.
"Her hands used to be clenched in fists. Now they're relaxed. You'd put your hand in front of her face and there'd be no reaction. She is more alert and awake. I know she is getting better.
"She can sleep now. She used to scream from midnight until 4am. I don't know if it was pain or frustration. It was very difficult."
When it was revealed last year that brain-damaged Louis Viljoen, of Springs, emerged from a three-year PVS after taking Stilnox, it caused a stir around the world. For the families of the brain-injured it gave renewed hope that their loved ones might recover.
Springs doctor Wally Nel, who accidentally discovered the drug's wonder effect on Viljoen, and his partner Ralf Clauss, a nuclear-medicine specialist, believe that the drug works on a dormant area in the damaged part of the brain that acts as a protective mechanism.
These dormant cells awaken and get back to work when they are properly stimulated, which is what Stilnox appears to do.
Nel explains that there has been a marked improvement in Godisamang's brain.
"Previously there was no prognosis for her. She had no response to anything. Now she has gone from being a PVS patient to a minimal-consciousness state."
Mike Sathekge, a professor in nuclear medicine at Pretoria Academic Hospital, and who is involved in the clinical trials on the drug, talks of the improvements he sees in Godisamang's brain scans.
"It's unbelievable, really - you see something that clinically you don't have the answers for. The conventional teaching of medicine is that if the brain is damaged it can't come back to normal. What we're seeing here in some aspects is defying science.
"We would be blind to ourselves by not entertaining the fact that the brain can regenerate itself. We're not saying all patients will respond. But there is a chance and we shouldn't rule it out."
On the other side of the world, in East Sussex, England, Amy Pickard is emerging from a PVS after a heroin overdose six years ago. It is a recovery her mother Thelma attributes to Stilnox. Her daughter now recognises food and has begun to form words. That's the hope of Godisamang's family.
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