Man in coma wakes after 19 years
A man in the US regained consciousness after spending 19 years in a coma, greeting his mother who was waiting at his bedside.
“He started out with ‘Mom’ and surprised her and then it was ‘Pepsi’ and then it was ‘milk’,” Alesha Badgley, Stone County Nursing and Rehabilitation Centre social director, said yesterday. “And now it’s anything he wants to say.”
Terry Wallis, 39, had been at the centre in Mountain View, Arkansas, since a car crash in July 1984.
Mr Wallis’s wife, Sandi, said he was riding with a friend when their car plunged into a creek. They were found the next day underneath a bridge. The friend was dead and Mr Wallis was comatose.
He emerged from the coma about two weeks ago.
“It’s been hard dealing with it, it’s been hard realising the man I married can’t be there,” Mrs Wallis said. “We all, the whole family, missed out on his company.”
The Wallises daughter, Amber, was born shortly before the accident. She is now 19 and Mr Wallis has said he wants to walk again, for her. He is a quadriplegic as a result of the crash.
His mother, Angilee Wallis, called her son’s return to consciousness a miracle.
“I couldn’t tell you my first thought, I just fell over on the floor,” she said.
Mr Wallis has spent most of his time at the rehabilitation centre, but his family took him out for weekends and special occasions.
“The doctor said that’s why he remembers things. We might have kept his mind going,” Sandi Wallis said.
