Video offers lessons on recovery, living

Professor Peter Wegner, who beat the odds after being hit by a bus, is the subject of a teaching video, produced by the Medical School, intended to spark discussion about difficult ethical questions surrounding the treatment of patients with catastrophic injuries.

by Kristen Cole

Doctors who evaluated the damage to Peter Wegner’s brain after a bus slammed into him nearly four years ago gave him a 5 percent chance of survival. If he survived, there was only another 5 percent chance he would not be in a vegetative state.

But Wegner, 70, at left, beat the odds. He is back at work as a professor emeritus of computer science at Brown. And he is the subject of a teaching video, produced by the Medical School, intended to spark discussion about difficult ethical questions surrounding the treatment of patients with catastrophic injuries.

The 20-minute piece, “Peter Wegner is Alive and Well and Living in Providence,” delves into the limits of scientific knowledge, the ability of family members to make difficult decisions under the most stressful of conditions and the differences in how people define quality of life.

Wegner’s neurologist, Stephen Mernoff, notes in the video that people view Wegner’s recovery through a variety of lenses: “Some of them are really tuned into how he is different, and some of them are more tuned into how he isn’t different.”

It is a central idea of the video, which captured in its lens reflections from Wegner; his wife, Judith; his sons Mark and Michael; longtime colleague and friend Andries van Dam, and Mernoff.

Produced by Edward Beiser, associate dean of the Medical School, with Luke Walden ’94, of Green Point Film, the video sketches the details of Wegner’s accident in London. It references Wegner’s four-week coma and longer rehabilitation during which he had to learn to talk and walk again.

The viewer hears a tape recording that captured Wegner’s frustration during the first few months of his hospitalization, expressed haltingly: “I…hate everything…that…happened…this…week. Hate.”

“It seemed obvious to me that Peter’s story would be a wonderful teaching tool,” said Beiser, who has shown the video to Brown students and local high school students. “While people are watching the video, I watch them. It holds them.”

Despite the permanent brain damage Wegner suffered, he co-authored a few papers following the accident and recently presented research at a professional conference. However, Wegner says, he is unable to perform research at the level he did before the accident.

In that way, he is different, his wife acknowledges. However, Judith Wegner notes in the video, she enjoys some of her husband’s personality changes since the accident, including the fact he has fewer inhibitions about expressing feelings like “I love you.”

Said his wife of nearly five decades: “I can’t point to anything that he can’t do that really matters. It’s really a 100 percent recovery, from my point of view anyway.”

According to Beiser, one section of the video that provokes discussion with viewers is an observation offered by Wegner’s long-time colleague van Dam. Had he been faced with the same set of circumstances, van Dam says, he might have made different decisions about treatment. Still, he adds, “That’s like many things in life. Without actually having lived the experience, you don’t know what it does to you.”

On a recent day, Wegner’s office is filled with signs of his current work. A recent issue of the Faculty Bulletin, a publication on which he serves as editor, sits on his desk. Behind him, a white board is filled with a list of action items under the heading of “Goals.” Wegner has walked in the spot where the accident took place; sometime afterward, the street was closed to automobile traffic.

Most surprising to him about the video, said Wegner, was the recounting of the statistics regarding his chances of living, and living with meaningful brain activity.

“Since I recovered rather better than most people thought, I thought it would help in the instruction of medical students,” said Wegner. “One lesson students can take is, even people who seem pretty bad might recover and enjoy their recovery.”