Given the seriousness of his injury, which resulted from blunt trauma to the head after Glover was hit by a jet-ski while floating in an inner tube on Atlanta's Lake Lanier, a neurologist told about the prospects for victims of such major brain injuries.
"There is no one that has been declared brain dead that has survived to being functional," said neurologist Dr. Brent Masel, national director of the Brain Injury Association of America and medical director of the Transitional Learning Center of Galveston, Texas several days before Glover was pronounced dead. "They will not get better."
Masel, who was not treating Glover and had no first-hand knowledge of the case, explained that the prognosis in such cases is so grim because of the make-up of the brain. "When someone is declared brain dead, it's not that their brain is not functioning at all," he said. "There are two components to the brain, the cerebrum, which is the thinking part and the brain stem, which narrows and becomes the spinal cord."
The stem is the automatic part, which controls respiration and heart rate and someone can technically live without a functioning cerebrum, which is not unusual in such injuries. "The thinking part of the brain is no longer functioning and all the patient has functioning is the brain stem," he said. "Very often what happens when you're deciding if someone is brain dead, you take them off the respirator and they're not even breathing and the only thing going is their heart, which will stop functioning if you're not breathing."
Before the accident, Usher, whose full name is Usher Raymond, had been in a legal battle with his ex-wife arising from a custody fight over their two sons.
Condolences flooded social media sites late Saturday, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. It said those who sent tweets of condolences included Justin Bieber, singer Toni Braxton and singer Eric Benet, among others.
