November 22, 2008
REPORTING FROM JERUSALEM
Sharon's doctors wait, watch
JERUSALEM - Doctors tending to the ailing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will meet this morning to discuss when his anesthetic should be reduced, allowing them an opportunity to gauge possible damage to his brain.
Dr. Shlomo Mor-Yosef, director of the hospital where Sharon is being treated, told reporters last night that the 77-year-old prime minister was still fighting for his life and that a scan of his brain had shown a slight improvement.
Mor-Yosef said that when doctors lighten the anesthetic that is holding Sharon in an induced coma, they will have a better indication of what damage has been done to his brain by the massive stroke he suffered last week.
"When we reduce the depth of the anesthetic, we look first of all of the response of Prime Minister Sharon to pain, just to see that he reacts," Mor-Yosef said in English, standing outside Hadassah hospital on the outskirts of Jerusalem. "If we don't see a response, this will be for us a bad sign."
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Photos: Ariel Sharon
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Ariel Sharon
Born: Sharon was born as Ariel Scheinerman on Feb. 27, 1928, in Kfar Malal, a cooperative farm in what was then British-administered Palestine. Education: He dropped out of university to join the Alexandroni Brigade in Israel's 1948 War of Independence.
Career: Commanded Armored Reserve Division 138 in the 1967 Middle East War. Chief of Southern Command in 1971. Retired from the army in 1973 and spearheaded formation of the Likud party. Reentered military and commanded an armored division in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Elected to the Knesset in 1974. Resigned. Appointed security advisor to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1975. In the late '70s concentrated on scattering settlements across the West Bank and Gaza Strip, raising Palestinian ire. Served variously as agriculture minister, defense minister, minister of housing and construction, infrastructure minister and foreign minister. Became prime minister in 2001. Left Likud and formed Kadima party last year.
Personal: His first wife, Margalit, died in a car accident in 1962. A year later, he married her younger sister, Lily. Lily died of cancer in March 2000. In 1967, Sharon's only son by Margalit, Gur, died when a playmate accidentally shot the boy in the head. Has two surviving sons, Omri and Gilad.
Today's meeting will include neurologists, neurosurgeons, imaging specialists and intensive-care specialists, Mor-Yosef said. A large team of doctors is working around the clock, trying to save Sharon's life, and Mor-Yosef said other hospitals in Israel had given their support and help.
Sharon was taken for a CT scan yesterday morning. "According to the result," Mor-Yosef said, "there is a slight improvement in the edema of the brain. ... The left side of the brain looks better than the right side of the brain, and the edema is reduced slightly."
He added that all the other vital signs - intracranial pressure, pulse and blood pressure - were normal. "The left side of the prime minister's brain seems in the scan to be intact," he said. "What this means we will only know as we wake the prime minister up gradually."
Rabbis have been visiting Sharon's bedside and have urged Israelis to pray for him. Many have placed written prayers into the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem and thousands prayed for him at synagogues throughout Israel over the Jewish Sabbath.
"We are human beings, and especially doctors are very optimistic," Mor-Yosef said when asked about Sharon's chances of recovery. "But in this condition I would like to emphasize it's still critical for the life of the prime minister. And all our activities is to save the life of the prime minister."
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