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Man Wakes Up From Coma After Wife Cares For Him For Five Years

Man Wakes Up From Coma After Wife Cares For Him For Five Years

The wife has vowed to look after him as long as he lives

Jake Massey

Jake Massey

A man has miraculously woken from a coma after being cared for by his wife for five years.

Li Zhihua, from Xiangyang in Hubei Province, China, sustained serious brain injuries after reportedly being knocked off his scooter by a motorbike in 2013.

His wife, Zhang Guihuan, subsequently spent almost 2,000 days as his sole carer, sleeping for only a few hours a day between cleaning, feeding and talking to her husband. During this period, the strain caused Zhang to lose 10kgs, but against all odds, Li regained consciousness last year - and his first words were: "Wife, I love you."

Doctors originally told Zhang her husband may spend the rest of his days in a vegetative state, however, the 57-year-old refused to accept this prognosis and spent every day reading to him and playing his favourite songs.

According to Chinese news outlet Pear, Dr Wan Qing'an said: "These things were very helpful to stimulate his nervous system.

"When he was taken to the hospital, he was in a vegetative state. He could not respond to anything."

Li has remained in hospital since and is undergoing recovery treatment with the help of his loyal wife, who has been assisting him with using a walking frame and massaging him. Li is not able to speak clearly, however, doctors said he had made great progress since coming out of the coma last year.

Zhang has been by her husband's bedside for six years.
Pear

Head nurse, Xia Li, said: "[Zhang] taught her partner many movements and patiently demonstrated them to him without any complaint."

Indeed, after six years of tending to her husband's every need, Zhang plans to continue being utterly devoted to her husband for the rest of his life.

She said: "I have never thought about giving up. As long as he is alive, I will keep serving him."

Hopefully, Li will continue to make progress and will one day be able to talk about his experience of being in a coma for five years. The mysterious state was the subject of discussion in a recent Reddit thread, in which people who had been in comas opened up about what it was like.

One person said: "I was in a coma for about two weeks following a cardiac arrest as a teen. I was technically dead for over an hour, in fact. People often ask me if I could hear my family talking to me or if I was dreaming. The answer is 'no'.

Li was in a coma for five years following a road traffic accident.
Pear

"There is a huge hole in my memory beginning about two weeks before the coma through a week after 'waking up'. And waking up is in quotes because I would wake up, ask a bunch of semi-incoherent questions, fall back under, then wake up again and ask the exact same questions, in the exact same order. Repeat six or seven times.

"The coma was not even blackness. It just does not exist. I remember having the hardest time believing it was actually mid-October when the last day I remembered was late-September."

Another added: "It was really just nothing but black. No dreams, no lights, no voices, just nothing."

Featured Image Credit: Pear

Topics: World News, China, Health