The Glasgow coma scale

I have been lucky to learn so much about brain injury through my weekly attendance of Headway. I can’t remember if we have been told much about the Glasgow coma scale or GCS, but it has been in my head for a while so I guess Headway must of put it in there. I have especially been thinking about it recently as I now have my hospital records from three years ago after my cardiac arrest. But what is the GCS you must be asking, well it is quite simple but it is very important and is used to assess the severity of a coma which then enable medics to understand the severity of a brain injury. It was first used by doctors in a hospital in Glasgow hence the name. It has a scale of 3 to 15 which. It might get a bit boring now but I feel the need to explain what is…..I guess it might be boring for some but it is not boring if you have been in a coma! There are three areas tested motor response, verbal response and eye opening. The higher your score the better your outcome is. 3-8 is severe, 9-12 is moderate and 13 -15 is mild. It uses tests where you are assessed on the way to attend to certain things. You are asked to reply to a verbal command and react to mild pain. I watched a YouTube video that showed how it is done, not on a real comatose person but is scary to watch and see that this test was done on me. There is lots of information about how the score is done but not much information about what the sections mild, medium and severe mean. I think if you are in a full coma the score is going to be 3 as you can not do anything. Not to say that everything brain injury survivors don’t have loving family and friends, but I think my recovery has been ‘amazing’ (I have been told that) but I think the love and support from my family and friends have enabled me to smash the GCS that was assigned to be. My GCS was 10.