“When Donald Herbert broke 10 years of virtual silence on Saturday and announced that he wanted to speak to his wife, his family and doctors were astonished and bewildered.
Mr. Herbert, 44, a Buffalo firefighter who suffered severe brain damage after being struck by debris in a burning building in 1995, had mustered only ‘yes’ and ‘no’ answers sporadically throughout the years, passing his days in front of a television that he could barely see because his vision was so badly blurred.
Neurologists said yesterday that such remarkable recoveries for people with severe brain damage are rare – but perhaps not as rare as the medical literature suggests.” (New York Times )
And, no, just to head off the inevitable Rabid Right take on this, his recovery has absolutely no bearing on Terry Schiavo’s case. You heard it here first.
