Oh. How long have I been gone? Quite a while, Bill. Quite a while. Oh, ten, ten years. What you see here is the highly distressing footage of a firefighter named Don Herbert waking up after being stuck in a coma for nearly ten entire years. The crazy thing was, pretty much every doctor that had ever taken a look at Don had assessed that his brain damage was much too severe and that he would never regain full consciousness again.

This was simply the leading medical belief at the time that when brain damage has been done and a person's consciousness has been lost, that damage cannot be reversed and that consciousness cannot be recovered. So when Don suddenly woke up from his coma after ten long years of being pretty much completely unresponsive, and he was actually lucid, able to immediately reflect on himself and hold full conversations.

Doctors everywhere were completely baffled. Don's case would go on to contribute to a significant change in the way that doctors perceived consciousness and brain injuries. And this is his full story. On the morning of December 29, 1995, Don Herbert, 34 years old, at the time, was helping fight a large fire inside a two and a half storey apartment building in Buffalo, New York.

However, as Don was doing, one final sweep of the building's rapidly burning attic for any people that may have been left behind, the roof suddenly collapsed before he could even react. A painful force immediately ripped through his body as falling chunks of fruit and ceiling pieces and other debris knocked him onto the ground, pinning him there. Since Don's oxygen mask had been damaged by the debris and his fall, to his horror, it was no longer functional.

So as he was trapped on the floor, disoriented, in shock from the chaos, desperately trying to squirm out from under a heavy pile of fruit and ceiling tiles, he was slowly suffocating to death from the heavy, thick black smoke in the air. By the time the other firefighters finally managed to find him and pulled him out from underneath all of that rubble, Don's brain had already been starved of oxygen for over 6 minutes.

For context, death usually occurs after around 5 minutes. Don was quickly rushed to the nearest hospital, but by then it was already too late. On the way there, he suffered a cardiac arrest and when he arrived, doctors found that he was already in a coma. Over the next few weeks, medical staff at the hospital did everything that they could to treat Don's many injuries and to help him wake up again.

Don's devastated wife and four children were by his side around the clock, frantically pleading and begging for him to be okay. Since Don was widely known and respected as an amazing family man, as well as an amazing firefighter who had previously received several awards for his bravery and leadership, a mountain of cards and letters had been delivered to him from friends, family members, neighbors and other firefighters.

Before long, people had also raised tens of thousands of dollars for him and his family as well. Incredibly, although Don had suffered very severe permanent brain damage as a result of the oxygen deprivation he had experienced, at first, things were actually looking fairly promising. After remaining in a coma for around two and a half months, Don suddenly woke up.

Granted, he was still in a very fragile and injured state. His speech was slurred. He couldn't ever eat anything without assistance. He had to be confined to his bed or a wheelchair all the time. And he could also no longer see much of anything outside of just blues. Most concerning of all, Don had pretty much no memory of anything anymore.

It just suddenly seemed like he no longer even remembered who he was, like his age or what his job had been. Furthermore, he could no longer recognize the voices and names of his family members and friends, and he treated even his wife and kids like they were mere strangers. Despite this, however, there was still hope that Don could continue to recover and improve in his health.

But unfortunately, just a few months after he had regained consciousness, he once again slipped into a coma. And this time it seemed like he would remain that way for good. Although Don's wife, Linda, tried taking him to several neurologists, asking each of them whether there was any chance at all that he could get better and wake up again.

She was given the same crushing answer every time. No. By that point, Don was completely locked into this minimally conscious state and was only being kept alive by feeding tubes. He spent most of his time slumped over in his wheelchair in front of a TV, completely unaware of his surroundings and completely unable to listen to or communicate with the people around him.

As such, realizing from all these doctors and also from just looking at Don that he was basically as good as dead, Linda was overcome with grief. She was eventually forced to make the terrible decision to move Don from his hospital bed to a nursing home. And she also signed a form stating that Don shouldn't be resuscitated and should just be allowed to die in the event of a stroke or a heart attack.

But although Linda and basically everyone else all expected, Don, to pass away relatively soon, interestingly, his condition remained stable over the years, neither improving nor deteriorating, as Don remained in his minimally conscious, comatose state. Linda incredibly always made sure to go out of her way to keep him in their children's lives. She would always bring Don to birthdays and holidays with them, even though he would just sit slumped over in his wheelchair without any bit of consciousness.

No one expected that he would ever regain consciousness again. But then, on the morning of April 30, 2005, almost ten years after Don's accident, he suddenly woke up from his coma. You see it just three months before his doctors suddenly decided to start giving him some drugs that were normally used to treat Parkinson's disease, ADHD and depression. At the time, these drugs had started to show a little bit of promise in healing patients with severe brain damage.

But even then, this was only for patients with recent brain damage. No one had ever expected that the drugs would actually have an impact on Don, whose brain had been completely debilitated for nearly a decade by that point, but by some incredible miracle, these drugs did have an impact, an incredible, almost incomprehensible impact. All that right after Don woke up from his coma, despite the fact that he hadn't spoken a word in almost ten years, and also the fact that he likely hadn't had a conscious thought in years either.

One of the first things he said was, I want to talk to my wife. His speech was heavily slurred, but the fact that he was even speaking and thinking clearly at all was just completely remarkable. After performing some quick tests, a staff member of the nursing home called Linda on herself, although she didn't pick up Don's 13 year old son, Nicholas did and was shocked to learn that somehow, against all odds, his dad had woken up from his coma.

When Don was told who it was on the other end of the phone, at first he just refused to believe that can't be. He was quoted as saying, He's just a baby. He can't talk. When Don had first fallen into his coma in 1995, Nicholas had indeed just been a baby at three years old. But although in Don's mind, he was convinced that he had only been asleep for three months, he was horrified to soon learn the real amount of time that had actually passed.

Oh, how? I can't wait a while, Bill. Wait a while. Oh, and then there's you. Don was heartbroken. He felt that he had abandoned his family and that he hadn't been able to be there for them over the past ten long years. It was just this horribly deep sensation of guilt, shame, frustration and sadness that came from losing out on such a big chunk of his life and seeing his kids grow up.

Over the next couple of hours, as news spread of Don's miraculous recovery, friends and family members from all over raced to the hospital to reunite with him, a man they long thought they had already lost. Incredibly, Don was more lucid and conscious than anyone could have ever imagined, which was shocking considering his state the first time he had woken up from his coma.

Nine years before Andrew would serve, although he was still pretty much blind, his memory seemed to have suddenly come back. And despite how long it had been, he was able to recognize his old friends, family and also members of his old fire crew. Just from hearing their voices for a brief, beautiful moment, it seemed to everyone that they might have their old Don back for good.

He stayed up all night that night, catching up with his sons and was even able to play little catch with them. At one point, he reached out to Pat his son Nicholas's head, but realized that he was aiming at an area that was no half of his son's height since Nicholas had grown so much in the decade that Don had been gone.

It was clear to everyone how sad Don was, but his family was just incredibly grateful to be able to talk to him again and to see the things to him that they had always wanted to say. It was a very heartfelt and bittersweet reunion. But after just 14 hours of being almost completely lucid, Don suddenly lost his mental clarity, although he could still hold short conversations with people.

Every now and then, he was never able to return back to that same level of consciousness ever again. Over the next few months, he developed numerous infections and also suffered another brain injury after falling while trying to get out of his bed. And on February 21st, 2006, Don passed away from pneumonia surrounded by his family. The moment Don woke up from his ten year coma, he gave countless families all around the world hope that their loved ones would also be able to wake up again someday as well.

Hundreds of people began reaching out to their doctors about the drugs that Don had taken and how he had managed to make such a miraculous recovery. His case helped change the way that doctors view consciousness. Today, it's known that patients in minimally conscious states don't always stay that way, and if hope of recovering from their brain damage after all.

Take care, guys, and I'll see you all next week.