Manel Montegudo | Spain | “I fell asleep at 22, woke up at 58”: a Spaniard who was in a coma for more than 30 years after falling | EC stories | NNDC | The world

According to German historian Frank Bosch, the current world war began in 1979 with the weakening of the Cold War and the rise of neoliberalism and China’s entry into the world market, regardless of technological advances in recent years. Years (internet, smartphones, etc.). Spanish Manel Montegudo, who has been in a coma since the same year, missed all of these events due to an accident.

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Manel He began working as a sailor at the age of 14. He was in Africa, Germany and Iraq when he fell 20 feet, hit his head and went into a coma. It was February 28, 1979, when he was 23 years old.

He was kept in Iraq for the first few months, then spent a few years in a hospital in Coruna, where he was eventually transferred to his home, where he was cared for by his girlfriend and current wife Konji.

There was a clot in the head – it still is – that put him in that position, his prognosis was always set aside, and at any moment his wife would find him “cold” so they “died while he was alive, my way was in the grave”, he recalled. Manel, As collected The world.

35 years later, it wasn’t until October 15, 2014 Manel He opened his eyes. Many events took place while he was asleep, Spain won the Football World Cup in 2010, remote controls appeared, the so-called internet he was married to.

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“My first impression was that the day before the accident, I was in the hospital, but in Iraq, I thought it was the day after the accident.”, Says Manel.

At the time of his accident, living together was difficult, and Konji had to have a marriage contract to take care of him.

“For me she was my girlfriend, I did not know she was already my wife. I recognized her as soon as I saw her face. What did not suit me was my hair because I had a lot of gray hair.”He recalled, but at the time he could not express himself in words, and after being in a vegetative state for a long time had to be rehabilitated to talk, go to the bathroom, or walk again.

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Seeing yourself in the mirror was the biggest challenge and the hardest blow.

“No, this is not me, this is an old man, I am 22 years old”.

He woke up with children and without a father

“I fell asleep at 22 and woke up at 58Manel says – now 65 years old – and feels the leap for the future he experienced when he woke up.

It was completely strange to him, society, technology, communication, medicine, people, most things established in his world in 1979 have changed. He got married with two daughters, his father died, he found his mother with dementia, and he died three years later.

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Saying he has no regrets about “not remembering anything”, he mourns his father’s death and highlights the fact that he “sacrificed his youth” for himself.

For his daughters, aged 37 and 26, he enjoyed the birth of one of his granddaughters, who is dedicated to gardening, writes poetry and is about to publish his fifth book.

There are no effects of gravity, you can not carry too much weight, or you can not lower your head too much because you feel dizzy. But if something he hates sleeps, he will go to bed at two in the morning and get up at seven-thirty in the morning to avoid going to bed.

“I hate sleeping. I go to bed because my body can’t catch it, and if I catch it, I won’t go back to it..

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