Man wakes from coma after 19 years

By DAVID USBORNE in New York

The doctors said that Terry Wallis who was in a coma after a car accident 19 years ago was unlikely ever to wake up. But then two weeks ago something extraordinary happened.

His mother was paying him a regular visit in his Arkansas nursing home when his lips moved and he said, "Mom".

In the days that have passed since, more and words have been tumbling out. "He started out with 'Mom' and surprised her and then it was 'Pepsi' and then it was 'milk'.

And now it's anything he wants to say," confirmed Stone County Nursing and Rehabilitation Center social director Alesha Badgley.

For the Wallis family, the awakening of Terry has been both astonishing and shocking.

Angilee Wallis, calls it a miracle: "I couldn't tell you my first thought, I just fell over on the floor," she said.

Mr Wallis was 19 when he and two friends plunged off a bridge into a ravine while riding in a pick-up truck. One was left unscathed, the second friend died while Mr Wallis was left in a coma and paralysed from the neck down. His new wife gave birth to a daughter shortly after the accident.

"It's been hard dealing with it, it's been hard realising the man I married can't be there," said Mr Wallis' wife, Sandi. "We all, the whole family, missed out on his company."

Mr Wallis still suffers from some brain damage and has trouble understanding that it is no longer 1984. He has said that Ronald Reagan is the US President and once asked for his now-dead grandmother, even remembering her old telephone number.

The process of awakening apparently started a few years ago when he started responding to questions from family members with grunts and blinks of his eyes.

Doctors still debate the accurate definition of a coma. Patients who remain unconscious for many years are more commonly said to be in a permanent vegetative state. It is very rare for them to regain consciousness, however.

- INDEPENDENT