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American Morning
Jessie Arbogast Returns Home
Aired August 13, 2001 - 09:05 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: We're joined now on the telephone by Jimmy Phares. He works for Acadian Ambulance, an air med service. That's the service that took Jessie Arbogast from Florida back to his home in Mississippi.
Jimmy, can you tell us right now about that ride? How long a ride was that, anyway?
JIMMY PHARES, PARAMEDIC: Oh, it's about a two hour ride. It's 110 miles. We, he tolerated it very well. He had his mother in the back of the ambulance with him, along with a paramedic, where he could see here the way we had him positioned and we got him back to his house in Ocean Spring and he -- Ocean Springs -- and he is resting very comfortably in his own bedroom with his mom and dad and some other family members.
HARRIS: Did he seem like he was maybe awake at all during that ride?
PHARES: Yes, and he had gotten some sedation so that the ride wouldn't be quite as traumatic for him. It was a very good trip. I was proud to be a part of that.
HARRIS: Good deal. Can you tell us, did you see his arm?
PHARES: No. Everything was bandaged up.
HARRIS: OK, so you couldn't see that at all.
PHARES: No.
HARRIS: Now, what kind of spirits was his mother in?
PHARES: His mother and father naturally are very happy to have Jessie back home. The community has really rallied around him. They showed a lot of support and they are all very happy and a lot of people in the streets that were, you know, kind of cheering him on and everybody's kind of happy to have Jessie back.
HARRIS: I want to ask you about that arrival when you did get to his house. I saw some of the pictures and the coverage and it seemed like there was quite a crowd out there.
PHARES: Yes, and really a lot of people didn't know he was coming home. So it's kind of a, you know, unexpected that so many people did show up. But that boy, he's had a lot of support. Like the marquis out in front of the local businesses have "welcome home, Jessie" and "hang in there, Jessie" and there's been a lot of community support for him and he certainly has a lot of family support.
HARRIS: That's great. His family is going to need that, no doubt.
Jimmy Phares, thank you very much, and a nice job.
PHARES: Oh, thank you.
HARRIS: Good job there.
PHARES: Thank you.
HARRIS: We're joined now to get some more medical insights on this, we're joined now by Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.
HARRIS: Tell us about Jessie's condition right now. Is he, it's called a light coma?
GUPTA: Right.
HARRIS: What exactly does that mean?
GUPTA: Yes, well, they keep describing that, a light coma. And actually you can look at coma and break it down to all sorts of different things. What they're talking about usually, Leon, is they're talking about his ability to move, either to command, meaning you say you lift your right arm, does he do that or is he just sort of moving spontaneously. So, one is his movement.
The second is his verbal. Is he talking? Is he muttering incoherent speech or is he actually having conversations? And finally, his eye opening. And what we do know from what the doctors have described is that he doesn't follow commands. So he won't actually do something if you tell him to, but he does move spontaneously, including some movement in his right arm, from what I understand, Leon.
HARRIS: Really?
GUPTA: Yes. And then his verbal, he mutters, but again is not actually interacting with somebody, not, you know, sort of responding to speech. He does keep his eyes open and apparently looks around. So he is in a sort of moderate to light coma, you know, and there's been all sorts of studies trying to figure out well he's going to do. The bottom line, really, is it'll be a few months before we would know.
HARRIS: Yes. Let me ask you about this. This condition at this particular point in his ordeal, what does being at home actually do for him that a hospital couldn't do for him?
GUPTA: Right. And I think that the question can sort of be that, you know, what does the hospital do that the home doesn't? And in this case the hospital's, they say there's really nothing more that the hospital would have provided for him. Everything, you know, his dialysis, the breathing machine, all that stuff, thankfully he's off that. And the rehab and all those sorts of things can continue at home.
And, you know, a lot of times a lot of doctors will feel that his care, his overall psychological improvement, his emotional improvement, all those things may be better served in the home versus the hospital. So...
HARRIS: Does his -- what about the coma condition itself? Does that complicate at all what's happening with his arm?
GUPTA: Probably not. Probably not. And from what I understand, again, talking to the doctors, his blood flow to his arm is quite good. It'll be quite a while before they know if he has really significant movement and we're talking about the fine motor movements of his hands, things like that. That's going to be a while and, you know, a year and a half to two years before we really know if that's going to improve.
HARRIS: Wow, that's along down the road.
GUPTA: Yes.
HARRIS: Finally, let me ask you this, considering the light coma, once again. Do you feel pain if you're in one, because I'm sure there's got to be, there's a lot of pain going. I heard that he's not on any medication for that right now.
GUPTA: Right. Well, he is in a light coma so he probably does feel pain. He's not someone who's like in a vegetative state so, you know, they, in fact, the ambulance driver said he sedated him for the ride. So he probably does have some sensation of things.
HARRIS: OK, well, good deal.
Thanks for helping us cover this one, this story.
GUPTA: Yes.
HARRIS: Dr. Sanjay Gupta, we'll talk to you later on.
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