Trapped in His Own Body

This article is about a man, Rom Houben, who went into what was thought to be a coma after a car accident in his early twenties. After over twenty-three years in a vegetative state, however, a huge discovery was made concerning his awareness. The doctors found out that the entire time the man was trapped in his own body. A neurologist had decided to take a different look at the patient, finding that his neural activity was different from that of a coma patient. The reason that the patient can’t communicate with the rest of the world is that his body went into complete paralysis, yet his mind remained as it was. The patient could hear everything around him and the only way he could keep moving on was by living in his own reality. Now using a state-of-the-art scanning system, the patient can now communicate with the rest of the world.

Ryan Rihani

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/23/man-trapped-coma-23-years