'Former PM Sharon shows positive signs in MRI'

Ex-aide to Ariel Sharon says "there was some kind of positive indication" in brain scans performed on comatose former PM.

By JPOST.COM STAFF
ariel sharon_311 (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
ariel sharon_311
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
Brain scans performed on former prime minister Ariel Sharon last week suggested there was a chance for some improvement in his condition, an aide to the former prime minister told AFP on Friday. Sharon has been comatose since he suffered a stroke seven years ago.
Ra’anan Gissin said that Sharon underwent MRI scans at Soroka University Medical Center in Beersheba on Thursday.
“The test was routine, but the results not entirely so,” Gissin told AFP. “There was some kind of positive indication.”
He did not offer any further details.
In October 2011, Gilad Sharon told The New York Times that his father was “responsive and gaining weight.”
“When he is awake, he looks at me and moves his fingers when I ask him to,” Gilad Sharon told the Times. “I am sure he hears me.”
Ariel Sharon, 84, has been in a coma since his second stroke in January 2006, just a month after his first stroke.
Gilad Sharon said that doctors encouraged him and his brother, former MK Omri Sharon, to let their father die after his second stroke. They refused, with Gilad stating that he dreamed that the medical staff would tell him there is no hope for his father, “but he stared at me with this look, with those green-gray eyes of his, and I knew I would never give up, and that I simply would not leave him.”
Lahav Harkov contributed to this report.