It is the stuff of fairytales and happy endings, the story of a Polish railway worker who woke up to a new world of plenty after falling into a "coma" 19 years ago when Poland was still communist.
Since a Polish TV station reported this month that railway worker Jan Grzebski, now 65, had roused from a coma-like state after nearly a generation, the phone in his humble apartment in this northern Polish town has not stopped ringing.
Everyone -- the Chinese, the Portuguese, the Americans -- wants to interview the Polish "Rip van Winkle," the bearded storybook character who slept for 20 years.
Even warnings by professor Hubert Kwiecinski, who is the Polish health ministry's adviser in neurology, that this may be less coma and more modern myth in the making have not dimmed the interest.
"We can't say with absolute certainty that this was a case of someone being in a coma or any form of coma such as being brain dead or in a vegetative state," Kwiecinski said.
After he was hit by a train in 1988, Grzebski was left bedridden and unable to speak, but he did not lose his vital functions.
He did not have to be fed intravenously or breathe with a respirator, which is usually the case of people in a comatose state, Kwiecinski said.
Grzebski himself said he was conscious of what was going on around him throughout his state of -- well, call it "in absentia" if it wasn't a real coma.
"I heard everything around me, I understood everything but I could not utter a single word," he said. "I was like a plant. It was horrible, not being able to communicate."
He proudly showed how today he is able to lift his legs a few centimeters and touch his head with his right hand.
Every gesture, no matter how minor, elicits the joy of Grzebski's wife Gertruda, who may be the true heroine of the story.
"Without her, I would have been pushing up daisies a long time ago," Grzebski said in a weak but clear voice. "I'm alive today thanks to my wife."
Doctors gave him "hardly any chance of surviving" after his accident in 1988, Gertruda recalled.
Grzebski struck his head when he was hooking up two train wagons. He developed a brain tumor which caused him to lose the power of speech and the ability to move his limbs.
Grzebski was transferred from one hospital to another to undergo treatment until finally his wife opted to bring him home and care for him herself.
"I did everything to keep him alive. I clung to even the flimsiest hope. I so wanted my children to have a father and their children, a grandfather," she said.
Earlier this year he was hospitalized with pneumonia, and medical staff seized the occasion to give him rehabilitative therapy. This time, it worked.
"I felt that I had a brain," Grzebski recalled.
There may not have been a miracle in Grzebski's revival, but the story of his wife's dedication has struck a chord with romantics.
And they will delight in learning that his first word after 19 years of silence was "Truda," a diminutive of his wife's name.
Grzebski is now making the acquaintance of 11 grandchildren.
The global media has likened Grzebski's story to the hit 2003 German film Good Bye Lenin! in which a family tries to recreate life in East Germany to spare their fragile mother too much commotion when she emerges from a coma after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Grzebski said he has been aware that the days of communism, rationing and interminable lines to get the little that was available in the shops, had long ended in Poland.
‘SHORTSIGHTED’: Using aid as leverage is punitive, would not be regarded well among Pacific Island nations and would further open the door for China, an academic said New Zealand has suspended millions of dollars in budget funding to the Cook Islands, it said yesterday, as the relationship between the two constitutionally linked countries continues to deteriorate amid the island group’s deepening ties with China. A spokesperson for New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters said in a statement that New Zealand early this month decided to suspend payment of NZ$18.2 million (US$11 million) in core sector support funding for this year and next year as it “relies on a high trust bilateral relationship.” New Zealand and Australia have become increasingly cautious about China’s growing presence in the Pacific
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
ESPIONAGE: The British government’s decision on the proposed embassy hinges on the security of underground data cables, a former diplomat has said A US intervention over China’s proposed new embassy in London has thrown a potential resolution “up in the air,” campaigners have said, amid concerns over the site’s proximity to a sensitive hub of critical communication cables. The furor over a new “super-embassy” on the edge of London’s financial district was reignited last week when the White House said it was “deeply concerned” over potential Chinese access to “the sensitive communications of one of our closest allies.” The Dutch parliament has also raised concerns about Beijing’s ideal location of Royal Mint Court, on the edge of the City of London, which has so
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
RSS