Man Who Awakened After 12 Years In A ‘Vegetative State’ Has Written A Memoire

January 14, 201511 yr

Martin Pistorious was diagnosed at 12 years old with what doctors thought resembled cryptococci meningitis. His state eventually deteriorated to the point where had lost his gross and fine motor skills, the ability to speak or make eye contact, and was left to an essentially vegetable-like state.

His parents were told by the doctors to bring Martin home to die. They brought him home, but he didn’t die. His parents ended up caring for him without a single sign of improvement for over a decade...

Joan vividly remembers looking at Martin one day and saying: " 'I hope you die.' I know that's a horrible thing to say," she says now. "I just wanted some sort of relief."

And she didn't think her son was there to hear it.

But he was.

"Yes, I was there, not from the very beginning, but about two years into my vegetative state, I began to wake up," says Martin, now age 39 and living in Harlow, England.

He thinks he began to wake up when he was 14 or 15 years old. "I was aware of everything, just like any normal person," Martin says.

But although he could see and understand everything, he couldn't move his body.

"Everyone was so used to me not being there that they didn't notice when I began to be present again," he says. "The stark reality hit me that I was going to spend the rest of my life like that — totally alone."

He was trapped, with only his thoughts for company. And they weren't particularly nice thoughts.

"No one will ever show me tenderness. No one will ever love me."

And of course there was no way to escape. He thought, "You are doomed."

So he figured his only option was to leave his thoughts behind.

That was his first strategy — disengaging his thoughts — and he says he got really good at it.

"You don't really think about anything," Martin says. "You simply exist. It's a very dark place to find yourself because, in a sense, you are allowing yourself to vanish."

But occasionally there were things that elicited thoughts he could not ignore.

Like Barney.

"I cannot even express to you how much I hated Barney," Martin says.

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Trapped In His Body For 12 Years, A Man Breaks Free : NPR