New York Man Awakens From Decade of Silence

In Buffalo, NY, Don Herbert’s family has missed him for almost ten years. Herbert, who will turn 44 next Saturday, was a firefighter battling a house fire in December 1995 when he was trapped under a collapsed roof. He went without oxygen for several minutes, and as a result he spent almost three months in a coma. After he awakened from the coma, he had lost his sight and had almost no memory of his life before the accident.

But last Saturday, Herbert woke in the morning and out of the blue he asked to see his wife, Linda. His family rushed to nursing home and for the next 14 hours, Herbert chatted non-stop with his wife, his four sons, and other family members and friends, catching up on the decade of his life that he’d missed entirely. Herbert was stunned when he learned that he’d been out of things for nearly ten years, and that he’d missed his children growing up. His youngest son was just four years old when his father was incapacitated.

At a news conference Wednesday at Erie County Medical Center, Linda Herbert said that since Saturday, his condition has not matched the startling events of Saturday, but doctors are optimistic. "He has had several infrequent moments of lucidity, which has given us much hope for further recovery," she said. "Although the subsequent periods of lucidity were not of the quality of Saturday, they were still of a degree which was considerably higher than before Saturday." Dr. Jamil Ahmed said that Herbert had been put on a new medication three months ago to see if the change would affect his condition. It was thought that the new drug would take six months before any changes would be noticed. But hen Ahmed examined Herbert on Saturday, he could follow commands such as moving his hands, shaking his head, and counting up to 200. "I went to see him in the nursing home and I was so amazed," Ahmed said. "I was so surprised that not only that he was talking but he was talking very sensibly. He was remembering his past; he just didn't realize how long he was asleep. ... He recognized people. His comments were very interesting and people were laughing."

Neurological experts say that cases such as Herbert’s are so rare that there isn’t much statistical data to study. There have been a few other widely publicized cases of brain-damaged patients showing sudden improvement after years of being uncommunicative, at least temporarily. In 2003, a man in Arkansas returned to consciousness 19 years after being injured in a car accident, shocking his mother by calling her "Mom" and asking for a Pepsi. Six months later his family reported that his brain function remained limited. A police officer in Tennessee, who was brain damaged in a 1988 shooting, began speaking to his family one day in 1996, telling jokes and chatting. He reminisced for 18 hours with his family about their annual camping trips and other memories, but the next day and afterward he never repeated the lucidity of that day, although he remained more alert than he had been prior to his one day of being close to normal. He died the following year from a blood clot.

Dr. Ahmed could not predict what the future will hold for Don Herbert. "He may fluctuate with the time, but the way he improved and woke up, we are hoping that he will progress," he said. "He was almost like in the persistent vegetative coma state, and suddenly this thing happened," Ahmed said.