Geez 19 years

[Stonecutter]

From the Chicago Sun-Times

Man wakes up from 19-year coma

July 9, 2003

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Ark.--A man regained consciousness after spending 19 years in a coma as the result of a car crash, greeting his mother who was waiting at his bedside.

''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,'' Stone County Nursing and Rehabilitation Center social director Alesha Badgley said Tuesday.

Terry Wallis, 39, had been at the Stone County Nursing and Rehabilitation Center since the July 1984 crash.

Wallis' wife, Sandi, said he was riding with a friend when their car plunged into a creek. They were found the next day underneath a bridge. The friend was dead and Wallis was comatose.

He emerged from the coma about two weeks ago.

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

Wallis' daughter, Amber, was born shortly before the accident. She is now 19 and Wallis has said he wants to walk again, for her. He is a quadriplegic as a result of the crash.

His mother, Angilee Wallis, called her son's return to consciousness a miracle.

''I couldn't tell you my first thought, I just fell over on the floor,'' she said.

Wallis has spent most of his time at the rehabilitation center, but his family took him out for weekends and special occasions.

''The doctor said that's why he remembers things; we might have kept his mind going,'' Sandi Wallis said.

AP


Ok, think of everything that's happened since 1984? What would be the first thing you'd tell him.

I think I'd have to tell him that the Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore.