Weekly Program - "How My Mind Came Back to Life - and No One Knew"

 

Tatiana Berardi suggested this TedTalk for our weekly program.  She shared,  "I watched it and think it's a very powerful message about communication."   Thank you, Tatiana, for organizing our program this week!

 

At age 12, Martin Pistorius fell into a coma, and spent 13 years locked inside his body, unable to communicate — until a caregiver noticed his eyes responded to her. His book "Ghost Boy" tells his story of his return to consciousness after a horrible illness ... and his struggle to tell the world that he was still there, inside his body, hoping to communicate.  Martin Pistorius is a web designer and author whose personal story borders on the unimaginable.

 

Imagine being unable to say, "I am hungry," "I am in pain," "thank you," or "I love you,” — losing your ability to communicate, being trapped inside your body, surrounded by people yet utterly alone. For 13 long years, that was Martin Pistorius’s reality. After contracting a brain infection at the age of twelve, Pistorius lost his ability to control his movements and to speak, and eventually he failed every test for mental awareness. He had become a ghost. But then a strange thing started to happen — his mind began to knit itself back together. In this moving talk, Pistorius tells how he freed himself from a life locked inside his own body.