'Coma' man was conscious for years

You —

A Belgian man who doctors thought was in a coma for 23 years was conscious all along, it has been revealed.

Medical staff believed Rom Houben had sunk irretrievably into a coma after he was injured in a car crash in 1983.

A doctor at Belgium's University of Liege who discovered that Mr Houben had been misdiagnosed said his case was not an isolated one.

"I was shouting, but no-one could hear me," Mr Houben, now 46, was quoted as saying by a German magazine.

Read more @ BBC News

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You — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 - 02:41

It's also being stuck in a place longer than many people on this site have been alive. Around the time when no one had mobile phones, home computers were rare. Forget that, even owning a car would have been rare back then!

The internet arrived in the UK ten years later.

I think that number is so large that it is easy to dismiss.

You — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 - 19:19

and it gets more complicated:

Medical ethicists raises doubts about coma man's communications

BRUSSELS (AP) -- A Belgian man who was diagnosed as comatose for 23 years says he feels reborn after decades of loneliness and frustration.

At least, that's what his hand typed out on a keyboard -- a hand that was being held by a caretaker.

And a leading bioethicist is voicing doubts that the man is really the one who's communicating.

His family and a doctor in Brussels say the car-crash victim was diagnosed as being in a vegetative state -- but that he was really conscious the whole time, just unable to communicate.

In the message typed out on his keyboard, he apparently describes being able to "see, feel and think" -- but without the ability to "participate in life."

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You — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 - 20:02

Dunno, and according to the text in the original article, it may not be a one off - there may be far more conscious people in comas than has been found so far.