Martin Pistorius was a healthy 12-year-old boy growing up in South Africa in the late 80’s until his life took an unexpected turn, and he came down with a strange illness. Doctors were perplexed, but their best guess was that he had contracted cryptococcal meningitis, a virus that usually affects people with a weakened immune system.

Martin’s conditions progressively worsened, losing all the ability to move on his own, make eye contact, or even speak. Eventually existing in a vegetative state, doctors told his parents, Rodney and Joan Pistorius, to take their son home and keep him comfortable until he died.

Much to their surprise, their son didn’t die.

“Martin just kept going, just kept going,” his mother says.

The family then fell into a routine for the next 12 years, where the father would get up at 5 o’clock every morning, dress his son, and then drive him to the special care center where he would leave him for the day.

“Eight hours later, I’d pick him up, bathe him, feed him, put him in bed, set my alarm for two hours so that I’d wake up to turn him so that he didn’t get bedsores,” Rodney says.

Martin showed no signs of improvement throughout that entire time, and his parents lost hope that their son would ever recover. Joan recalls looking at her son one morning and saying, “I hope you die.”

She says now she knew that was a horrible thing to say, but explained, “I just wanted some sort of relief.” The mother didn’t think that her son could hear her.

But he did.

Martin, now 39 years old, recalls that around 14 or 15, he began to “wake up” and become aware of everything going on around him.

“Yes, I was there, not from the very beginning, but about two years into my vegetative state, I began to wake up. I was aware of everything, just like any normal person,” Martin says.

Although he was now completely coherent, Martin was forced to exist trapped within his immobile body with just his thoughts and with no way to communicate.

“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.”

Martin’s thoughts would often turn dark, as he thought he was destined to live alone, trapped with just his inner dialogue to keep him company.

“You are doomed.”

“No one will ever show me tenderness. No one will ever love me.”

So for a while, Martin attempted to just turn his thoughts off, where he chose to just exist.

“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.”

Since everyone thought Martin was a vegetable, he spent most of his days at the special care center, where he was parked in front of the television watching re-runs of Barney the dinosaur.

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

Day after day, hour after hour, his long days played out in the same manner.

Martin decided one day that he’d had enough, and he began to re-engage with his inner thoughts. One thing he pondered was why his mother had told him that she hoped he would “just die.”

“As time passed, I gradually learned to understand my mother’s desperation. Every time she looked at me, she could see only a cruel parody of the once-healthy child she had loved so much. “

As Martin began to engage his thoughts, miraculously, he began to feel better. And then something else began to happen: his body began to feel better too. Over time, Martin was slowly and painstakingly able to prove that he existed to those around him.

As reported by News.com:

It wasn’t until his 20s that Pistorius regained some control of his head and arms.

An aromatherapist treating him picked up on his subtle “language” — virtually imperceptible smiles, gazes and nods he used to indicate he was paying attention.

She urged Pistorius’s parents to take him for tests. After years of therapy and intense computer-based exercises, he was able to use a computer to write messages and operate a synthetic voice.

He continued to improve, and by 2003, he was even able to hold a basic office job. Later, he would meet his wife, Joanna. Pistorius currently lives in England and works as a web designer.

After returning to life, Martin wrote a memoir about being trapped in his own body, and how he miraculously escaped.

What an incredible story! It really makes you wonder how many others out there are trapped in a similar way: completely aware of their surroundings, but simply dismissed as a “vegetable” since they are unable to communicate.

h/t [NPR]