List of people who awoke from a coma

This is a list of people who awoke from a coma after a lengthy period of time.

• Munira Abdullah (born 1959), an Emirati woman who in 2018 woke up after being in a coma for 27 years that was caused by a car accident
• Gary Dockery (1954–1997), an American police officer who spent over seven and a half years in a coma after being shot in the forehead. However unlike most of patients who come out of a coma after years, he fell back into a coma for the rest of his life after one day.
• Jan Grzebski (1942–2008), a Polish railroad worker who fell into a coma in 1988 and woke up in 2007
• Sarah Leanne Scantlin (1966–2016), an American high-school teenager who fell into a coma in 1984 due to injuries sustained from a car accident, and woke up 20 years later in 2004[1]
• Dianne Katz (born 1955) South African bookkeeper who fell into a minimally conscious state after experiencing two brain aneurysms and three strokes in 2004. In November 2006, Dr. Wally Nel, a well known South African doctor who awakened many people from coma states by using a drug called zolpidem, awakened Katz after giving her Zolpidem. The awakening was filmed and photographed with family, friends and caregivers around her. Like most coma patients awakened through zolpidem, she fell back to into a coma after 3 hours. However like most of these temporarily awakened patients with treatment they relatively quickly become permanently awakened and since or before March 2007, Katz is now able walk, talk, and eat unaided.[2]
• Leonard Lowe (1920s-?) was an American boy who, in 1939, fell into a catatonic stupor resulting from an illness that was a legacy of the Spanish flu. In 1969, Dr. Oliver Sacks managed to awaken him and a few other Spanish flu related catatonic patients using a medication called levodopa or L-dopa. However, after a brief period of being in a fully recovered like state, Lowe and all of the other patients fell back into their catatonic stupors with occasional very short periods of reawakenings. Lowe's and the other patients' stories were the focus for the 1973 book Awakenings and the 1990 movie adaptation Awakenings.
• Abdelhak Nouri (born 1997). The then 20-year-old Dutch footballer collapsed during a match. Over a year later, he emerged from a coma.
• Martin Pistorius (born 1975). Because of a mystery illness, the South African spent three years in a vegetative state, four in a minimally conscious state, and five unable to move anything other than his eyes (locked-in syndrome). In 1999, he fully awakened and has since recovered to the point that he was able to become a web designer, developer, and author. In 2011, he wrote a book called Ghost Boy, in which he describes his many years of being comatose.
• Terry Wallis (born 1964). This American man was in a coma for nearly a year after a truck accident, then a minimally conscious state for 19 years.

See also

• Karolina Olsson (1861–1950), a Swedish woman who allegedly hibernated for 32 years

References

1. "Find a Grave - Sarah Leanne Scantlin". 20 July 2020.
2. https://www.chninternational.com/pvs_recovery.htm