The Man Who Slept for 19 Years

Healing power

When doctors first got a look at Terry Wallis after his car crash all those years ago, they knew that his prospects were not good. With extensive damage to his temporal lobe, frontal cortex and brain stem, the prognosis looked bleak. Days turned into weeks; weeks into months; months into years. The longer it went on, the worse his odds became. But his mother, Angilee, stuck by him on his 19-year journey back to consciousness, and his story became a real victory for the family who never gave up hope.

The doctors were right, of course: Wallis had all the symptoms of a lost cause. But the brain remains the most enigmatic of organs, tender yet tenacious, vulnerable but strong. It may be fragile, but it is nothing if not resourceful. Even in the most hopeless cases, it can still bounce back and surprise us.

But the brain doesn't get better just on its own. Like a muscle, it requires mental exercise to regain some of its strength. Specialised therapies are vital to the treatment of people recovering from brain injury. Even in older people, the brain retains a certain degree of plasticity, and faculties lost can sometimes be regained through the training and reworking of the brain pathways that remain. Angilee's routine visits to Terry's bedside may have been made more in hope than expectation, but who knows what essential nourishment her gentle but regular inputs provided?

Of course, Terry is not out of the woods yet. His awareness of himself and his surroundings are still distorted, and he seems to lack a short-term memory. Perhaps these faculties will never be regained. But if the Terry Wallis story teaches us anything, it is never say never.

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