“Ghost Boy” woke up from coma after being trapped for 12 years

There are few stories of odds-defying miracles that can quite compare to the tale of Martin Pistorious, the man who woke up from a 12-year coma having been trapped in a vegetative state.

Perhaps you’ve heard Martin’s incredible tale – it played out around 30 years ago – but if you haven’t, buckle your seatbelt and prepare for a ride that will leave you speechless with dismay.

It was back in January, 1988, that the then-12-year-old Pistorious left his school in South Africa complaining of a sore throat.

In the months that followed he weakened, body and mind. As per reports, his muscles began to waste away and his hands and feet curled like claws before he eventually slipped into a coma.

Doctors ultimately diagnosed him with Cryptococci meningitis and tuberculosis of the brain, though weren’t sure what exactly had resulted in his coma and paralysis. At a loss with regards to an explanation, they told his shocked mother and father, Rodney and Joan Pistorious, at the end of his first year in a vegetative state that they could do no more for him.

Furthermore, they explained that the young boy now had the brain function of a three-month-old baby, and that his parents should take care of him until he died.

They did exactly that, continuing to care for him despite the fact that there seemed to be no hope. Rodney would get up at 5am each morning to dress his son and take him to a care center. Each evening he would “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.”

Then, several years into his frozen state, Pistorious started to wake up.

Suddenly he could see and hear everything around him, but could neither move nor speak. He later explained that his body felt distant, “as if encased in concrete”, and he couldn’t control it.

Terrifyingly, though Martin was able to make small movements, his caregivers didn’t notice. Being “aware of everything” but not able to talk or move left Pistorius with understandable trauma. He recalled a time his mother said to him, “I hope you die.”

“I know that’s a horrible thing to say. I just wanted some sort of relief,” Joan Pistorius said later.

With nothing to do but lie weighted with his internal thoughts, Pistorious endeavoured to “disengage” from the voices in his head.

But one day, Pistorius’ aromatherapist, Virna van der Walt, noticed his subtle “language” of virtually imperceptible smiles, gazes and nods. By that point he was about 25.

Upon her advice, Rodney and Joan sent their son to the Centre For Augmentative And Alternative Communication at the University of Pretoria. There, tests confirmed that Martin was aware and could respond to statements.

His parents bought him a computer with communication software and, after years of therapy, he was able to use it to write messages and operate a synthetic voice similar to the one made famous by theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking.

“As a result of the brain infections, I ended up in a vegetative state — in other words, I was unable to react or respond to anything or to communicate,” Pistorious told the MailOnline when he was 39.

“At the end of that year, the doctors apparently told my parents they could do no more for me and to take me home to die, which is essentially what happened.”

Speaking to NPR, he added: “The stark reality hit me that I was going to spend the rest of my life like that — totally alone. You don’t really think about anything. You simply exist. It’s a very dark place to find yourself because, in a sense, you are allowing yourself to vanish.”

“I have a younger brother and a sister, and they and my parents would go on holidays without me, which was extremely difficult. The worst part was that I had a perpetual fear they’d have a car accident and die, and would never come to fetch me,” he explained to MailOnline.

“I never felt angry with my parents as I knew they loved me and they did the best they could. But I felt furious about the situation. There were many times when I cried inside. I reached a point where I essentially gave up.”

Having worked for years to be able to read, write and operate his computer, Pistorious landed a job at a health center in 2003.

In 2003, Pistorius got a paid job at the health centre, working one day a week.

 

Trapped In His Body For 12 Years, A Man Breaks Free Via @nprnews http://t.co/HCAayKpVgO pic.twitter.com/WugzqCg7FF

— Marcel Rivera Paniza (@UtopiasArchitct) January 10, 2015

“At every turn my eyes opened in wonder as I crashed into new experience: seeing a man with brightly coloured hair like parrot feathers running down the centre of his head; tasting a cloud of melting sugar called candy floss; feeling the warm pleasure that comes with going shopping for the first time to buy Christmas presents for my family; or the sharp surprise of seeing women in short skirts,” he said.

He went on to learn how to build websites and graduated from university. In 2008, he met the love of his life, Joanna.

“I work with the disabled in my career, so it isn’t something I am wary of, and I just knew — it’s hard to explain — that Martin was very special. I’d had relationships before, but he struck me as a very unusual and fascinating man. Straight away, I saw past his disability,” Joanna told MailOnline.

“It makes me angry when people refer to me as his ‘carer’. I’m not his carer. I am his wife. His mind is incredible, and I am learning from him all the time.”

Pistorius proposed to Joanna in a hot-air balloon in December 2008. The couple then wed in June 2009 and currently live in England, where Martin works as a web designer.

“It was she (Joanna) who has taught me to understand the true meaning of the Bible passage we were having read at the service: ‘There are three things that will endure — faith, hope and love — and the greatest of these is love’,” Pistorius said.

“My life has encompassed all three and I know the greatest of all is indeed love, in all its forms. I’d experienced it as a boy and man, as a son, brother, grandson and friend, I’d seen it between others and I know it could sustain us through the darkest of times. Now it was lifting me closer to the sun than I ever thought I would fly.”

Martin’s memoir, Ghost Boy: My Escape From a Life Locked Inside My Own Body, was published in 2011.