The family of a firefighter who spent nearly a decade in a minimally conscious state before suddenly regaining lucidity captured the heart-wrenching moment he woke up on camera.
Donald Herbert was just 34 years old when his life changed forever after he was badly injured while responding to a house fire in Buffalo, New York, in December 1995.
The roof of the property collapsed on the father-of-four, pinning him under a pile of debris which nearly suffocated him.
He was deprived of oxygen for several minutes before he was rescued by his colleagues – but by the time his wife Linda arrived at the hospital, he was already in a coma.
Speaking to Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes in 2007, Don’s devastated spouse said: “I remember pleading and begging with him in the hospital when he was unresponsive.
“Don’t leave me, don’t leave the kids, we need you.”
One of their sons added: “You try to get them to squeeze your hand or move a toe or something like that…we were looking for just about anything.”
Donald Herbert was starved of oxygen after becoming trapped under debris while responding to a house fire (YouTube/60 Minutes)
Don eventually emerged from his coma around a year later, but experienced struggles with his speech, vision and mobility, while he was also unable to eat without assistance.
The New Yorker could barely remember anything and did not recognise his nearest and dearest – and within a few months, he had slipped into a minimally conscious state.
This means that Don – who was also left blind following the accident – was able to respond to stimuli and show some awareness, but was otherwise unable to communicate.
His family were forced to move the firefighter to a nursing home where he was being kept alive by a feeding tube and could receive constant care, while Linda was told by experts she ought to let go.
She told Cooper: “I took him to one neurologist and I was basically begging him, you know, to tell me, ‘Is he gonna get better, or isn’t he?’
“And he just sort of said, ‘Well, look at him. What do you see? You see what I see, there’s nothing there’. And I was just devastated.”
One of their son’s described how it made him ‘sick to his stomach’ to see his father in such dire straits, while another said they ‘never’ got used to his dad being minimally conscious.
His wife Linda and their four sons explained that they were unable to communicate with Don for nearly ten years (YouTube/60 Minutes)
Don remained this way for more than nine years – until he suddenly awoke at the nursing home on 30 April, 2005, asking where his family was.
His loved ones and former firefighter pals all rushed to the care facility, where a nurse then lent them a video camera to record footage of Don’s extraordinary ‘awakening’.
“How long have I been gone?”
The then-43-year-old struggled to utter his first words after not speaking for nearly ten years, while his vision issues meant he was forced to recognise his relatives and pals by their voices.
In the tear-jerking video, Don’s sons can be seen embracing their dad as he asked: “How long have I been gone?”
Obviously, a lot had changed in all of those years – including the height and maturity of his and Linda’s youngest son, Nick, who was only four-years-old when Don was first injured.
“He still thought that I was really young and he went to put his hand out over me to see how tall I was,” Nick said.
“We just kept telling him to raise his hand higher, because he was trying to feel for me down low.”
The firefighter finally woke up in 2005 (YouTube/60 Minutes)
“He felt like he abandoned us”
In another extremely emotional moment, Don then became visibly upset as he again asked how long he was ‘gone’ for, before sobbing when he finds out it had been nearly a decade.
“He felt so bad,” Linda explained. “He felt like he abandoned us, he felt so bad that he wasn’t there for the boys.”
Don’s uncle, Simon Manka, told AP news agency at the time that the firefighter was under the impression that he’d only been away for three months.
Medics around the world were left baffled by the patient’s miraculous recovery from a minimally conscious state, as experts explained it is almost unheard of for patients to recover from severe brain injuries like Don’s after so many years.
It is believed that Don’s awakening might have been a result of him being given a new cocktail of drugs which were normally used to treat Parkinson’s, ADHD and depression.
Tragically, despite his incredible comeback, the dad-of-four died the following year on 21 February, 2006.
Don had continued to wake up sporadically, but while attempting to get out of bed one day, he fell and suffered another brain injury.
The beloved firefighter then contracted pneumonia and passed away – less than a year after he woke up and reunited with his family.
