Surviving locked-in syndrome: How one man confounded expectations of death
CBSN
When 28-year old Jacob Haendel was rushed to a Massachusetts emergency room four years ago, doctors thought the one-time chef, as young as he was, was having a stroke. But he wasn't; his scans showed something very different, and very strange: Jake's brain seemed to be unplugging itself from the rest of his body.
"The wires weren't sending signals from place to place," said Dr. Brian Edlow, who examined Haendel in the ICU. He wasn't sure at first what was causing it, until Haendel made a confession. He told him he partied hard, and that included doing drugs – opioids, mostly – until he turned to street heroin. Haendel's medical team surmised he probably ingested a toxin somewhere along the way. That's what was causing the damage, leading to a very rare condition, with a very long name: Toxic Acute Progressive Leukoencephalopathy.More Related News