When doctors diagnosed 12-year-old Martin Pistorious with Cryptococci Meningitis, they told his parents he was as good as a vegetable and should be taken home to die.
Instead, Martin lived for years without improvement or visible changes, LifeNews.com reports.
According to NPR news, his father would get up at 5 o’clock in the morning, get him dressed, load him in the car, take him to the special care center where he’d leave him. Rodney said, "Eight hours later, I’d pick him up, bathe him, feed him, put him in bed, set my alarm for two hours so that I’d wake up to turn him so that he didn’t get bedsores."
For twelve years, Martin’s family cared for him without any sign that he was improving. Joan started to despair and even told her son, "I hope you die."
Today she acknowledges that was a horrible thing to say but says she just wanted some sort of relief. Remarkably, now Martin is 39-years-old and says he was totally aware of everything going on around him.
Martin says that after about two years in his vegetative state, he became "aware of everything, just like any normal person."
He was trapped in his own body for 12 years but eventually awakened. He does need some assistance and cannot speak without computer equipment. He also uses a wheelchair to get around. However, he is now 39-years-old, maintains a job, and is married. Martin wrote a memoir about his story called Ghost Boy that was published in 2012.