Not quite dead yet; Man awakes from 19 year coma

Kill Bill, The Dead Zone, Good Bye Lenin are all movies about people who awoke from a coma and things in their life changed.

In the film Good Bye Lenin, which is set in the East Berlin of 1989 . Alexander Kerner’s mother, Christiane, an ardent supporter of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, suffers a heart attack when she sees Alex being arrested in an anti-government demonstration and falls into a coma shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall. After almost a year she awakes, but is severely weakened both physically and mentally, and doctors say that any shock may cause another, possibly fatal, attack. Alex realises that her discovery of recent events would be too much for her to bear, and so sets out to maintain the illusion that things are as normal in the German Democratic Republic. To this end, he and his family revert the flat to its previous drab decor, dress in their old clothes, and feed the bed-ridden Christiane new, Western produce from old labeled jars. For a time the deception works, but gradually becomes increasingly complicated and elaborate. Despite everything, Christiane occasionally witnesses strange occurrences, such as a gigantic Coca-Cola advertisement banner unfurling on a building outside the apartment. Alexander and a friend with film-making ambitions edit old tapes of news broadcasts and create their own fake special reports to explain them away. It really is a cute and well done film – rent it on Netflix.

In real life railway worker Jan Grzebski, 65, fell into a coma after he was hit by a train in 1988. The Polish man has woken up from a coma after 19 years to find the Communist party no longer in power and food no longer rationed.

When Grzebski had his accident Poland was still ruled by its last communist leader, Wojciech Jaruzelski.

“When I went into a coma there was only tea and vinegar in the shops, meat was rationed and huge petrol queues were everywhere,” Mr Grzebski said. “Now I see people on the streets with mobile phones and there are so many goods in the shops it makes my head spin,” he told Polish television.

He credits his survival to his wife, Gertruda. Doctors gave him only two or three years to live after the accident. Mrs Grzebski is reported to have moved her husband every hour to prevent bed sores.

“It was Gertruda that saved me, and I’ll never forget it,” he said

“I cried a lot, and I prayed a lot,” Mrs Grzebski said on Polsat television. “Those who came to see us kept asking: ‘When is he going to die?’ But he’s not dead.”

He missed his Final Taxi.