Man who was 'locked' inside his body for 10 months could hear everything around him and woke up to tell his story
Jake Haendel once faced a lot of people's worst nightmares when he suffered from 'locked-in syndrome' for almost a year.
The 36-year-old from Boston, Massachusetts, USA, was in a paralytic state where he could not speak or communicate for 10 months, as a result of his heroin addiction.
A party animal in his youth, he also struggled with depression and insomnia, turning to drinking and drugs as he got older, describing himself as a 'high-functioning' addict.
This would later result in him getting locked-in syndrome (LIS), a rare neurological disorder that causes paralysis of all voluntary muscles except those controlling eye movement and blinking.
Advert
It horrifyingly meant that he was conscious, but could not move or speak.
In May 2017, Jake started to display some unusual symptoms, such as a higher pitched voice which other people pointed out to him, explaining that he also started to 'swerve', and also eventually would start losing his balance while walking.
"I'd have to like put my hands up for the walls on the side to keep my balance he went to get checked out," he recalled to Inside Edition on YouTube.
Health professionals got him checked for stroke-like symptoms, though he was sceptical as the symptoms were happening for weeks.
Doctors said that he had a terminal brain condition, giving him six months to live, telling him that within three to four months, he would lose the ability to swallow and talk, losing the ability to walk or even sit upright prior to that.
They explained that he would quickly decline, and that no-one survives, and before long, he was declared brain dead, though this was not the case.
It took two nurses talking about 'a real awkward hookup' for Jake to realise the doctors thought he wasn't conscious.
"Two nurses working on me... [one of them] giggling and saying 'well maybe we shouldn't talk in front of the patient' and the other says 'oh he can't hear you he's brain dead anyway' - that's how I learned," he said.
Jake went on: "There were a lot of intense emotions when I heard that cause I was like 'oh my God they think a brain dead' and then I'm like 'wait am I brain dead?'"
Realising he could think and remember, he knew he wasn't brain dead, and he assured himself that he wasn't going crazy.
Panicking, he worried if he would every escape, as he was in the condition for 10 months.
"Minutes felt like hours, hours felt like days, days felt like weeks, and it was even hard to calculate what a day was," he explained, adding that he tried to count seconds to figure out what a minute was.
Convinced that he also didn't sleep, he said that he passed out instead.
Jake remembered that TV show Law and Order SVU would be on, which he jokingly described as 'painful as hell, a different type pain'.
Saying that no health workers really said anything nasty, he recalled: "The only unfortunate thing I really heard from like a healthcare worker, they literally came in the room and said 'I don't feel like brushing your teeth today', and walked out."
His hyper sensitivity also left his skin hurting if he felt a light breeze, feeling the weight of the blankets and left uncomfortable when they buried him in the duvet, making him overheat.
Jake also said that he would get itches, which no-one could help him itch as he couldn't communicate, causing him to panic and pass out.
But one day, 10 months down the line, he had a breakthrough, as he explained: "They're [the doctors] just doing their usual rounds and I'm just kind of stuck in purgatory here and I hear 'he's moving something, you guys see that? He's moving something' and I hear how it's involuntary and then I hear 'hey I don't know if you can hear me but if you can do that again'," and with all his might, he managed to do it again.
A nonverbal specialist was then brought in to help him communicate with his eyes, eventually teaching him how to speak again.
Today, he has relearnt how to speak, though he demonstrated on video that he struggles to drink water, he highlighted that he 'appreciates everything', as losing the ability to function has changed his outlook on life.
Joshua Nair