Buffalo, N.Y. – Soon after Dr. Jamil Ahmed stood before TV cameras two weeks ago and told how his brain-injured patient had snapped out of a stupor lasting almost 10 years, the telephone calls and e-mails started pouring in.
Everybody wants a word with Ahmed, 43, who’s just three years removed from his residency training in Boston after earning a medical degree in Pakistan.
There are doctors calling about patients. There are family members of brain-injured people asking if Ahmed can talk to their doctors.
And just what drugs was the brain-injured former firefighter, Donald Herbert, taking when he turned from being barely aware and almost mute into a virtual chatterbox for 14 hours with his astounded family and friends?
“Why don’t you just tell me the medications?” Ahmed recalls one woman demanding. “You just tell me the name of the medications and I’m not going to be calling you again.”
Ahmed, who has been asked by Herbert’s family not to identify the drugs, has returned a few phone calls, explaining his medication strategy in general terms, and warning, “There is no guarantee.”
That’s for sure. Ahmed was treading in largely untested waters when he put Herbert on a combination of drugs usually used to treat Parkinson’s disease, depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
But, he said, he’d seen such drugs help his other brain-injury patients at the Erie County Medical Center regain focus, memory and powers of concentration, and become less agitated or irritable.
He had even seen such drugs bring people out of comas – the eyes-closed state of complete unawareness – and other kinds of impaired consciousness, although not after nearly 10 years like Herbert.
In December 2002, just a few months after Ahmed started work, Herbert’s wife, Linda, showed up to talk about her husband. He suffered brain injuries when a roof collapsed on him while fighting a fire seven years before. Everybody said nothing could be done to help him, Ahmed recalled her saying. Could he help?
“We could try. I think there is a hope,” Ahmed recalled replying.
Others had been trying the medication approach too, but “the evidence is not great,” said Dr. Steven Flanagan, medical director of brain injury rehabilitation at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.
Herbert’s family said he had fallen back from his 14-hour burst and was having only infrequent moments of mental clarity.
In the days that followed, Ahmed said, Herbert started talking more and smiling. More recently, he began physical therapy and has been walking with assistance, Ahmed said.
It’s not clear what will happen from here on. But the results so far are encouraging for a man who had been limp in a wheelchair and drooling. And they seem to back up Ahmed’s philosophy of medicine.
“I never give up,” he said. “Don’t give up. There should be always hope. And God is going to help you.”
