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Mute 9 years, brain patient speaks again http://www.philly.com/images/common/spacer.gif During a 14-hour stretch, he chatted with his wife, sons and others. Doctors are evaluating his progress. http://www.philly.com/images/common/spacer.gif http://www.philly.com/images/common/spacer.gif ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. - Nearly 91/2 years after a firefighter was left brain-damaged and mostly mute during a 1995 roof collapse, he did something that shocked his family and doctors: He asked for his wife. Staff members of the nursing home where Donald Herbert has lived for more than seven years raced to get Linda Herbert on the telephone. It was the first of many conversations the patient had with his wife, four sons, and other family and friends Saturday during a 14-hour stretch, Herbert's uncle Simon Manka said. "How long have I been away?" Herbert asked. "We told him almost 10 years," the uncle said. "He thought it was only three months." Herbert, who will turn 44 Saturday, was fighting a house fire Dec. 29, 1995, when the roof collapsed, burying him under debris. After going without air for several minutes, Herbert was comatose for 21/2 months and has undergone therapy ever since. News accounts in the days and years after his injury describe Herbert as blind and with little, if any, memory. Video shows him receiving physical therapy but apparently unable to communicate and with little awareness of his surroundings. Manka declined to discuss his nephew's current condition or whether the apparent progress was continuing. The family was seeking privacy while doctors evaluated Herbert, he said. "He's resting comfortably." As word of Herbert's progress spread, a steady stream of visitors arrived at the Father Baker Manor nursing home in this Buffalo suburb. "He stayed up till early morning talking with his boys and catching up on what they've been doing over the last several years," firefighter Anthony Liberatore told WIVB-TV. Herbert's sons were 14, 13, 11 and 3 when he was injured. Staff members at the nursing facility recognized the change in Herbert, Manka said, when they heard him speaking and "making specific requests." "The word of the day was amazing," he said. Rose Lynn Sherr, a doctor with New York University Medical Center, said that when patients recover from brain injuries, they usually do so within two or three years. "It's almost unheard of after 10 years," she said, "but sometimes things do happen and people suddenly improve and we don't understand why." Manka said visitors let Herbert set the pace of the conversations and did not bring up the fire in which he was injured. "The extent and duration of his recovery is not known at this time," he said. "However we can tell you he did recognize several family members and friends and did call them by name." There have been a few other widely publicized examples of brain-damaged patients showing sudden improvement after a number of years. In 2003, an Arkansas man, Terry Wallis, returned to consciousness 19 years after he was injured in a car accident, stunning his mother by saying "Mom" and then asking for a Pepsi. His brain function remained limited, his family said months later. Unlike Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman whose feeding-tube care raised anguished end-of-life ethical discussions, Wallis was never described by doctors as being in a persistent vegetative state. |