In March 2010, high school student Bobby Ghassemi was taken out of his crashed vehicle and airlifted to a nearby Virginia hospital more dead than alive with severe brain trauma.
He was so much more dead than alive that the physician who eventually advised the Ghassemi family on using fish oil, Dr. Michael Lewis said, "For all intents and purposes, he was dead on the scene. I'm looking at the reports, and they report a Glasgow Coma Score of three. A brick or piece of wood has a Glascow Coma Score of three. It's dead."
Bobby was placed in intensive care in a coma with all the apparatus possible to keep him a breath from death. His brain was flooded with blood and a hole had to be put into his skull to relieve some of the pressure.
The hospital's physicians commented that his brain injury was so bad, it was a wonder that he was alive enough to be in a coma. They told Bobby's father and mother it was doubtful he'd be more than a vegetable if he came out of the coma. He'd be unable to speak or recognize his family.
Time for a drastic interventionAfter 10 days, Bobby was still comatose but stable. His dad, Peter Ghassemi, felt more should be done than maintaining stability in a coma. So he started asking around to old Army buddies and was led to Army colonel Dr. Micheal Lewis.
Dr. Lewis recommended fish oil based on an early episode of a West Virginia coal miner who barely survived a mining accident with severe brain damage. His condition had resembled Bobby's.
The 26-year-old miner, Randall McCloy, was "on death's doorstep," according to Randall's hospital neurosurgeon, Dr. Julian Bailes. He and the other doctors then decided to forgo the normal wait and see after Randall was stabilized in intensive care.
They decided to take a radical course from normal AMA protocol and put Randall into hyperbaric therapy to increase oxygen to his brain while administering fish oil through Randall's feeding tube. After a brain injury, even as some recovery is noticed, the brain cells continue dieing from progressive inflammation.
Dr. Bailes knew that the brain needs to feed on omega-3 fatty acids to heal inflammation as well as stimulate brain and nervous system cell growth. After discussing Randall's condition with fish oil omega-3 experts, Dr. Bailes determined that 20 grams fed through Randall's feeding tube daily might bring him around.
20 grams is 10 times more than what an uninjured person would supplement with fish oil. Dr. Lewis explained the Dr. Bailes intervention with Randall to Bobby's dad, who thought the whole thing strange. But he realized that three months after the mining accident, Randall McCloy left the hospital walking and talking.
At first, the hospital staff resisted Peter's urging to try the fish oil therapy on his son Bobby. Their viewpoint was that the McCloy incident was just one anecdotal episode and not worth pursuing, perhaps even risky. But Peter persisted strongly and they finally yielded.
Today, at age 20, Bobby smiles as he recalls his high school graduation where he took off his cap and waved it to the cheering students. His dramatic recovery has left him with some weakness on the left side of his body and difficulty walking, but he's back.
Yet, even after two successful applications of omega-3 fish oil for extremely brain damaged victims who recovered rapidly after both were written off from any significant recovery, the medical establishment only equivocates and considers the possibility of someday exploring omega-3 fish oil "scientifically" for brain traumas.
