{"id":9251,"date":"2007-06-04T11:05:00","date_gmt":"2007-06-04T18:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/?p=9251"},"modified":"2007-06-04T11:05:00","modified_gmt":"2007-06-04T18:05:00","slug":"man-awake-after-19-year-coma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/?p=9251","title":{"rendered":"“Man awake after 19-year coma”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fortunately, this miraculous awakening took place in Poland<\/a>.  Had the 65-year-old former railway worker pulled out of his nearly two-decades long sleep somewhere in, say, San Francisco, there’s a chance he might have caught some of last night’s Democratic candidate debate—at which point I think he would have opted for the coma.\n<\/p>\n

\nMuch like Chris Dodd.\n<\/p>\n

\nBut as luck would have it—and unlike the Democratic presidential hopefuls, who seem to believe they’re running against Nixon in ‘72—Jan Grzebska has actually moved forward<\/i> in time:<\/p>\n

\n

A railway worker who emerged from a 19-year coma woke to a radically altered Poland and thinks “the world is prettier now” than it was under communism, his wife said Sunday.\n<\/p>\n

\nGertruda Grzebska, 63, said that for years she fed her husband Jan carefully with a spoon and moved his body to prevent bed sores.\n<\/p>\n

\n“For 19 years he did not move or say anything,” Grzebska told The Associated Press by phone. “He tried to say things but it couldn’t be understood. Sometimes we pretended we understood.”\n<\/p>\n

\n“Now he spends his days sitting in a wheelchair and last weekend we took him out for a walk in his wheelchair,” she said.\n<\/p>\n

\n“He was so amazed to see the colorful streets, the goods,” she said. “He says the world is prettier now” than it was 19 years ago, when Poland was still under communist rule.\n<\/p>\n

\n“I could not talk or do anything, now it’s much better,” Jan Grzebski, 65, told in TVN24 Television in a weak but clear voice, lying in bed at his home in the northern city of Dzialdowo.\n<\/p>\n

\n“I wake up at 7 a.m. and I watch TV,” he said, smiling slightly.\n<\/p>\n

\nWojciech Pstragowski, a rehabilitation specialist, said Grzebski was shocked at the changes in Poland —especially its stores: “He remembered shelves filled with mustard and vinegar only” under communism. Poland shed communism in 1989 and has developed democracy and a market economy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nSure.  But under communism, the literacy rate was 100%, and, as Michael Moore hopes to point out in an upcoming documentary, mustard and vinegar are<\/i> the “champagne and caviar of condiments.  If you can’t get your hands on a tub of mayo.”\n<\/p>\n

\n

Despite doctors’ predictions that he would not live, his wife never gave up hope and took care of him at home.\n<\/p>\n

\n“I would fly into a rage every time someone would say that people like him should be euthanized, so they don’t suffer,” she told local daily Gazeta Dzialdowska. “I believed Janek would recover,” she said, using an affectionate version of his name.\n<\/p>\n

\n“This is my great reward for all the care, faith and love,” she told the AP, weeping.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nA recently-paroled Jack Kevorkian could not be reached for comment.\n<\/p>\n

\nOkay, that’s not exactly true.  I just didn’t bother calling him.  Guy gives me the creeps, if you want the truth.\n<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fortunately, this miraculous awakening took place in Poland.  Had the 65-year-old former railway worker pulled out of his nearly two-decades long sleep somewhere in, say, San Francisco, there’s a chance he might have caught some of last night’s Democratic candidate debate—at which point I think he would have opted for the coma. Much like Chris Dodd. But as luck would have it—and unlike the Democratic presidential hopefuls, who seem to<\/p>\n

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