Learning To Live Again

'Living Corpse' Wakes After 19-Year Coma
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Associated Press

WARSAW, Poland — A Polish railway worker who woke up after 19 years in a coma is learning to live again.

"For 19 years he did not move or say anything," Gertruda Grzebska told The Associated Press by phone. "He tried to say things but it couldn't be understood. Sometimes we pretended we understood."

Grzebska, 63, said that for years she fed her husband, Jan, carefully with a spoon and moved his body to prevent bed sores.

Despite doctors' advice that he would not live, his wife never gave up hope and took care of him at home.

In 1988, when Poland was still run by a communist government, Grzebski sustained head injuries as he was attaching two train carriages together. He fell into a coma. Doctors also found cancer in his brain and said he would not live. Grzebski's wife took him home.

Last October he fell sick with pneumonia and had to be hospitalized again, Grzebska said. Doctors' efforts led to the first signs of recovery. "He began to move and his speech was becoming clearer, although I was the only one to understand him," she said. Intensive rehabilitation brought more effects.

"At the start, his speech was very unclear, now it is improving daily," Wojciech Pstragowski, a rehabilitation specialist, said on TVN24.

"He can now move his feet, feeling has returned to his limbs and he can hold light objects."

"If he continues to make such progress, he will soon be able to walk," Pstragowski said.

Read full article at link above.

The dedication of this wife reminds me of the wife in the movie Harrison's Flowers.