About George Thompson
Location: Missouri
Occupation: Writer
Bio: Bio I was born in the small town of Ironton, Missouri in the mid-40s. My father was a minister and my mother was the devoted pastor’s wife. We moved when I was three to Kansas City where Dad pastored several churches, then moved to Fulton in 1960 where I graduated from Fulton High School in 1962. Dad was pastor at the Southside Baptist Church from 1960 through 1967. It was during those teenage years that I started writing poetry, articles, short stories and novels. Many poems were of a “grim” nature because I was usually either frustrated or felt depressed when I wrote them. Further in-depth study of myself helped me to see matters in a different, more enlightened way and gave me a much greater peace Bio of mind. That feeling came about when I realized that a Higher Power held control over my life and although I felt free here on earth to explore many things because God gave me the mind to make my own decisions based on the “terms” I had set for myself it was I who set the terms and levels of frustration and worry. Once I turned everything over to God, my writings became more positive and that feeling of emptiness I once had was lifted. My faith in God and the good intentions of mankind grows daily. I believe in the power of words, whether they are written, spoken or through the motions and spelling in sign language. They can be used to empower or defeat, accept or deny. My poetry is just one of many means of communicating. Retired now, I make my home in Ironton once again after being gone for sixty years. I write a poem every day, an article or two a week and have a continuing column at wickedwordsmith.com on the Web. My pleasures are writing, feeding birds and taking care of my new cat, Mandi.
Posts: 146
More from this author
What happens with brain trauma.
What makes life worth living? What makes life worth living after having been in a coma? The aptly titled documentary Coma tries to answer that question and many others. It follows four individuals inside the Center for Head Injuries at the JFK Medical Center in Edison, N.J. Each has suffered severe brain trauma. They are comatose when the cameras first start filming and we journey into each life to see what happens once they come out of the coma.
These are not-so-pretty representations of peoples’ lives as the families of the coma patients try to cope with the everyday struggles. They watch their loved ones come into a conscious realm, but without knowing anything or anyone. Progress is literally one step at a time, from the 19-year old girl who thinks she’s 13 to the 37-year old man who was a yachtsman and now speaks like a baby.
Once patients come out of a coma doctors must carefully watch each of them to determine what kind of shape they are in. Simple questions that would sound strange to most people (Where are you today?) help the doctors determine the cognitive abilities or lack thereof of the patient.
Over the year encompassed by Coma some of the patients got better and were able to leave the hospital, moving on to other facilities for further care and observation. Others had not progressed at all and seemed to be stuck in some other time zone and left behind.
Coma shocked me. I have never seen such a presentation before, nor say that I ever will again. Although it was well presented and showed in depth what patients go through on a daily basis once they have had a brain injury, I was still stunned. To see adults before the trauma living a full life and then watch them after an accident was a horrific experience for me.
This is one of the best documentaries that I’ve ever seen.
