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He spent twelve years in a coma, but he could, hear and understand everything around him. The impressive story of a man who came back to life after 12 years of being in a coma.
When he was 12, Martin Pistorius was hit by an unknown disease, some doctors believed it was cryptococcal meningitis. As days passed by, his condition would deteriorate until he ended up in a state where he couldn’t move or speak anymore. Eventually his body slipped into a coma.
His parents were told that their son was half dead and advised them to keep him at home and care for him until he would pass away. Little did they know that their son was aware of everything around him and that his body refused to collaborate.
He wasn’t aware right from the beginning. By the time he was 14/15 he started realizing what was happening around him and began to understand every single world he heard. He was a prisoner in a body that refused to help prove his mind was awake.
Martin recalled the horrific moments he would live every time his parents and brothers would go in vacation and leave him alone in the house. Until they would get back, his head would get attacked by paranoia, imagining that if his family had a car crash, nobody would come for him. He remembers his father would get up every morning at 5 o’clock and take him to the special care facility where he would be left the whole day. At the care center he used to be positioned in front of the TV which was running the cartoons Barney. Every day, he would see the same cartoons over and over again. He admitted that he arrived to hate Barney with all his heart.
His mother, recalled that one day she looked at him and her mouth just said what was on her mind. She told him she was hoping for him to die, so they could both get liberated from the struggle. She didn’t know her son heard the terrible message. But there was no way for him to move or hint his parents that he was there, as his body was stiff as a rock. Hearing his mother wishing him dead and seeing her desperate because of his condition crashed everything inside him.
Martin tried doing exercises on his own, he started observing when the sun was setting so he could tell the time, every day. Miraculously, by the age of 25, he started recovering little by little even though his family failed to observe the hints he was giving them. One of the therapists realized the boy was using tiny gestures to show that he is able to communicate.
Presently Martin is 39 years old and is married. He is still unable to speak and ii using a computer to express himself. He wrote a book, called Ghost boy to share with world the story of a young mind imprisoned in his own body.
Image Source: Huffington Post
