Terry Wayne Wallis (April 7, 1964 – March 29, 2022) was an American man from the

Ozark Mountains The Ozarks, also known as the Ozark Mountains, Ozark Highlands or Ozark Plateau, is a physiographic region in the U.S. states of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and the extreme southeastern corner of Kansas. The Ozarks cover a significant portio ...

Arkansas Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the South Central United States. It is bordered by Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, and Texas and Oklahoma to the west. Its name is from the Osage ...

who, on June 11, 2003, regained awareness after spending 19 years in a

minimally conscious state A minimally conscious state (MCS) is a disorder of consciousness distinct from persistent vegetative state and locked-in syndrome. Unlike persistent vegetative state, patients with MCS have partial preservation of conscious awareness. MCS is a rel ...

Early life

Wallis was born on April 7, 1964, in Marianna, Arkansas, to Angilee and Jerry Wallis. Six weeks before his accident, Wallis became a father when his wife Sandi gave birth to a daughter.

Accident

On July 13, 1984, Wallis was driving his pickup truck with two passengers when it smashed into a railing fence on a small bridge near Stone County,

, and skid over the edge. The truck was found upside down in the dry riverbed below. The accident killed one of the two passengers. Aged 20, Wallis was found unresponsive but breathing, with significant injuries. He remained comatose and

quadriplegic Tetraplegia, also known as quadriplegia, is defined as the dysfunction or loss of motor and/or sensory function in the cervical area of the spinal cord. A loss of motor function can present as either weakness or paralysis leading to partial or t ...

and was moved to a Mountain View nursing home. Within a year of the accident, the coma stabilized into a minimally-conscious state, but doctors believed that his condition was permanent.

Awakening

In 2003, Wallis spontaneously awoke and began talking. When a nurse asked him who the woman walking toward him was, he identified her as "mama." He believed that he was still 20 and that it was still 1984. His muscles remained weak but he gradually experienced limited recovery over a three-day "awakening period" in which he regained the ability to control some parts of his body and to speak to others. However, he remained disabled, including the motor speech disorder

dysarthria Dysarthria is a speech sound disorder resulting from neurological injury of the motor component of the motor–speech system and is characterized by poor articulation of phonemes. In other words, it is a condition in which problems effectively ...

. "His mother and all of his family cared for him relentlessly during his coma and afterwards,” according to his obituary. “His family would bring him home on alternate weekends for years. Doctors believe that this stimulation contributed to his awakening period.” Wallis was the subject of the '' BodyShock'' special for 2005 "The Man Who Slept For 19 Years" made for

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned enterprise, state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a four ...

in the UK. It showed his mother and daughter encouraging him to talk to

neurologist Neurology (from el, νεῦρον (neûron), "string, nerve" and the suffix -logia, "study of") is the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the brain, the spinal c ...

s to try to find out how he had regained speech after such a long time. The program featured several prominent physicians, including Caroline McCagg, the medical director of the JFK Center for head injury in New Jersey; Joe Giacino, a

neuropsychologist Neuropsychology is a branch of psychology concerned with how a person's cognition and behavior are related to the brain and the rest of the nervous system. Professionals in this branch of psychology often focus on how injuries or illnesses of t ...

who said that Wallis' brain retained a lot of information from before 1984 but little after 1984, because he had lost the ability to store new memories and so was effectively

amnestic Amnesia is a deficit in memory caused by brain damage or disease,Gazzaniga, M., Ivry, R., & Mangun, G. (2009) Cognitive Neuroscience: The biology of the mind. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. but it can also be caused temporarily by the use o ...

; and Martin Gizzi, a neurologist who showed that damage to the

frontal lobes The frontal lobe is the largest of the four major lobes of the brain in mammals, and is located at the front of each cerebral hemisphere (in front of the parietal lobe and the temporal lobe). It is parted from the parietal lobe by a groove betwe ...

made Wallis unable to process experiences into memories. Also featured in the program was the neuropsychologist Roger Llewellyn Wood. Using new technology, brain scans were done on Wallis by Nicholas Schiff of

Weill Cornell Medical College The Joan & Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University is Cornell University's biomedical research unit and medical school located in Upper East Side, Manhattan, New York City, New York. Weill Cornell Medicine is affiliated with NewY ...

. The hypothesis built from the imaging studies is that Wallis' brain reconnected

neurons A neuron, neurone, or nerve cell is an electrically excitable cell that communicates with other cells via specialized connections called synapses. The neuron is the main component of nervous tissue in all animals except sponges and placozoa. N ...

that remained intact and formed new connections to circumvent damaged areas.

Death

Wallis died in

Searcy, Arkansas Searcy ( ) is the largest city and county seat of White County, Arkansas, United States. According to 2019 Census Bureau estimates, the population of the city is 23,767. It is the principal city of the Searcy, AR Micropolitan Statistical Area ...

, on March 29, 2022, at the age of 57.

References

External links