Kansas City Star | 05/04/2005 | Patient silent for years suddenly gets chatty: " Posted on Wed, May. 04, 2005
(AP)
Herbert

Patient silent for years suddenly gets chatty

The Associated Press

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — Nearly 9� years after a firefighter was left brain-damaged and mostly mute in a 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 phone Linda Herbert.

The conversation was the first of many the patient had with his relatives and friends Saturday in a 14-hour stretch, said Herbert's uncle, Simon Manka.

“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 on 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 2� months and has undergone therapy ever since.

News accounts since his injury describe Herbert as blind and with little, if any, memory. Video shows him apparently unable to communicate and with little awareness of his surroundings.

Manka declined Monday 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.

Rose Lynn Sherr of New York University Medical Center said that when patients recovered from brain injuries, they usually did so within two or three years."

The Human spirit will prevail!