Miracle of mute man
Published: May 4, 2005
A brain injured fireman left virtually mute for the past ten years has shocked the medical world and his family by talking again.
In December 1995, the roof of a burning home collapsed on Donald Herbert. He went without oxygen for several minutes before he was rescued, and he ended up blind with little memory.
The accident also left him largely mute. Since then the 43-year-old, has been living in a nursing home in suburban Buffalo.
But in a development that has surprised doctors, he suddenly asked for his wife, Linda at the weekend.
Over the next 14 hours, he chatted with her, his four sons and other family and friends, catching up on what he’d missed.
“How long have I been away?” Herbert had asked. “We told him almost 10 years,” said his uncle, Simon Manka. “He thought it was only three months.”
A steady stream of visitors arrived at the Father Baker Manor nursing home in Orchard Park to see the fireman.
Herbert’s sons were 14, 13, 11 and three when he was injured.
Staff members at the nursing facility recognised the change in Herbert, Manka said, when they heard him speaking and “making specific requests.”
“The word of the day was ‘amazing,”’ he said. The nursing home and the family have declined to describe his condition since then or discuss medical details of the case.
Normally, brain-injured patients who get better do so within the first five years, especially in the first two years, and usually the change is gradual.
Doctors are still trying to figure out the reasons behind Herbert’s recovery.
“We really don’t know for sure what’s going on,” says Anthony Stringer, from the Emory University School of Medicine.
According to experts the answer might involve some long-delayed change in the brain or a sudden improvement might also result from a different cause, like a change in medications or treatment of some other medical condition that’s been suppressing mental function.
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