Man wakes from 19-yr coma in Poland
Ap, Warsaw
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. Gertruda Grzebska, 63, said that for years she fed her husband Jan carefully with a spoon and moved his body to prevent bed sores. "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." "Now he spends his days sitting in a wheelchair and last weekend we took him out for a walk in his wheelchair," she said. "He was so amazed to see the colourful 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. "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. "I wake up at 7 a.m. and I watch TV," he said, smiling slightly. Wojciech 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.
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Jan Grzebski is learning to live and to understand the politically altered Poland to which he has awakened after 19 years. With him is his wife, Gertruda. PHOTO: AP |
