List of notable cases of people who awoke from a coma

This is a list of people who awoke from coma like states such as a persistent vegetative state, Minimally conscious state, Catatonic stupor, or locked-in syndrome after a lengthy period of time.

• Munira Abdulla (born 1959) is an Emirati woman who in 2018 woke up after being in a coma caused by a car crash for 27 years.[1]
• Riaan Bolton (born c. 1980) suffered severe brain trauma in a car crash in July 2003. He emerged from a coma after three years when his family learned about the effect of the drug Zolpidem (also known as Ambien) on fellow South Africa coma victim Louis Viljoen (see below).[2]
• Gary Dockery (1954–1997) was an American police officer who spent over seven and a half years in a coma after being shot in the forehead. However unlike most patients who come out of a coma after years, after two days of talking, he became unresponsive again.
• Jan Grzebski (1942–2008) was a Polish railroad worker who fell into a coma in 1988 and woke up in 2007.
• Leonard Lowe (1920s–?) was an American boy who, in 1939, fell into a catatonic stupor resulting from encephalitis lethargica. In 1969, Dr. Oliver Sacks managed to awaken him and a few other Spanish flu related catatonic patients using a medication called levodopa or L-dopa. However, after a brief period of being in a fully recovered like state, Lowe and all of the other patients fell back into their catatonic stupors with occasional very short periods of reawakenings. Lowe's and the other patients' stories were the focus for the 1973 book Awakenings and the 1990 movie adaptation Awakenings.
• Abdelhak Nouri (born 1997). The then 20-year-old Dutch footballer collapsed during a match. Over a year later, he emerged from the coma.
• Wanda Palmer (born 1970/1971) American woman who was beaten up and left for dead in an attack that happened in June 2020. In July 2022 she awakened and was able to identify her brother Daniel Palmer as the attacker. Daniel Palmer was arrested and died mere days later in custody.
• Martin Pistorius (born 1975). Because of a mystery illness, the South African spent three years in a vegetative state, four years in a minimally conscious state, and five years unable to move anything other than his eyes (locked-in syndrome). In 1999, he fully awakened, and has since recovered to the point that he was able to become a web designer, developer, and author. In 2011, he wrote a book called Ghost Boy, in which he describes his many years of being comatose.
• Annie Shapiro (1913–2003) was a Canadian apron shop owner who was in a coma for 29 years because of a massive stroke and suddenly awakened in 1992. Apart from the patients in the true story Awakenings, Shapiro was the longest a person has been in a coma like state and woken up. Her story inspired the 1998 movie Forever Love.[3]
• Terry Wallis (1964–2022). This American man was in a coma for nearly a year after a truck crash, then a minimally conscious state for 19 years.
• Louis Viljoen (born c. 1970). In 1994, this South African switchboard operator fell into a persistent vegetative state after being hit by a truck while riding his bike. In 1999, Dr. Wally Nel gave him Zolpidem (also known as Ambien) after a nurse told Viljoen's mother that involuntary spasms in his left arm had caused him to tear his mattress and that this could have been because of him feeling uncomfortable deep inside. Within 25 minutes, he was talking, and by November 2006 he had recovered to the point where it is no longer necessary to give him Zolpidem. The drug has since been used to awaken other coma patients, and several have been awakened around the world since, such as Riaan Bolton (see above).[2]