Posted on 06/02/2007 8:52:24 AM PDT by marthemaria
WARSAW (AFP) - A Pole who spent 19 years in a coma has woken up and will now have to adapt to a country where the communists are no longer in power, a television station announced Friday.
Railwayman Jan Grzebski fell into a coma after he was hit by a train in 1988, the private channel Polsat said.
In an interview, Grzebski said that he owed his survival to his wife, Gertruda.
"She's the one who always took care of me. She saved my life," he said.
Grzebski was a father of four at the time of the accident. He is now making the acquaintance of 11 grandchildren.
Doctors had not expected Grzebski to survive, let alone emerge from the coma.
"I cried a lot, and I prayed a lot. Those who came to see us kept asking: 'When is he going to die?' But he's not dead," said Getruda.
Poland's communist regime was still clinging onto power when Grzebski had his accident, only losing its grip the following year, in 1989.
On the brash neon-lit streets of new European Union member Poland, the period seems a distant memory.
"What amazes me today is all these people who walk around with their mobile phones and never stop moaning. I've got nothing to complain about," said Grzebski.
i guess catholic countries don’t euthanize those that need help. God Bless Poland than this family.
Amen. My wife works with someone who is complaining that the new kitchen and the trip to Europe are going to cost so much.
Woke up to a Warsaw Pactless world.
What a lucky guy. He got to sleep through the entire Clinton Era.
Here’s a story for the Terry Schiavo ping list if I ever saw one!
WARSAW, Poland (Reuters) — A 65-year-old railwayman who fell into a coma following an accident in communist Poland regained consciousness 19 years later to find democracy and a market economy, Polish media reported on Saturday.
Wheelchair-bound Jan Grzebski, whom doctors had given only two or three years to live following his 1988 accident, credited his caring wife Gertruda with his revival.
“It was Gertruda that saved me, and I’ll never forget it,” Grzebski told news channel TVN24.
“For 19 years Mrs Grzebska did the job of an experienced intensive care team, changing her comatose husband’s position every hour to prevent bed-sore infections,” Super Express reported Dr Boguslaw Poniatowski as saying.
“When I went into a coma there was only tea and vinegar in the shops, meat was rationed and huge petrol lines were everywhere,” Grzebski told TVN24, describing his recollections of the communist system’s economic collapse.
“Now I see people on the streets with cell phones and there are so many goods in the shops it makes my head spin.”
Grzebski awoke to find his four children had all married and produced 11 grandchildren during his years in hospital.
Exceprted from http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/06/02/polish.coma.reut/
“What do you MEAN Def Leppard isn’t around anymore! Why I should just kill myself now!”
Coma ping...
Amen.
ping
Good story.
Imagine some hippie going into a coma in 1969 and waking up in 1988. “Good morning. Ronald Reagan is president, Sonny Bono is a Republican mayor, and Clint Eastwood has his own police force.”
(Thanks Sam Kinison)
In 1977 I sailed a sailboat back from England. We stopped in Lisbon about Christmas time and had a big party on a British boat tied up near us. We had people from quite a few countries on board to include a bunch of Poles. We sang Christmas Carols in different languages that night. About 3 in the morning one of the Poles asked the question, “How many Russians does it take to change a light bulb”. Things sort of went down hill from that point.
LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
But just wait until he sees his first gay parade!
How many does it take ;)
>>
What a lucky guy. He got to sleep through the entire Clinton Era.
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ROTFLOL
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