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, and Oklahoma, as well as a small area in the southeastern corner of Kansas. The Ozarks cover ...

Arkansas Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the West South Central region of the Southern United States. It borders Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, Texas to the southwest, and Oklahoma ...

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 (PVS) and locked-in syndrome. Unlike PVS, patients with MCS have partial preservation of conscious awareness. MCS is a relatively new cate ...

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 skidded 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

coma A coma is a deep state of prolonged unconsciousness in which a person cannot be awakened, fails to Nociception, respond normally to Pain, painful stimuli, light, or sound, lacks a normal Circadian rhythm, sleep-wake cycle and does not initiate ...

tose and

tetraplegic 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 ...

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. It is a condition in which problems effectively occur with the ...

. "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 channel owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation. It is state-owned enterprise, publicly owned but, unlike the BBC, it receives no public funding and is funded en ...

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

neurologist Neurology (from , "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 nervous system, which comprises the brain, the ...

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 focus on how injuries or illnesses of the brai ...

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, a condition known as

anterograde amnesia In neurology, anterograde amnesia is the inability to create new memories after an event that caused amnesia, leading to a partial or complete inability to recall the recent past, while long-term memories from before the event remain intact. Thi ...

; 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 Weill Cornell Medicine (; officially Joan and Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University), originally Cornell University Medical College, is the medical school of Cornell University, located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in Ne ...

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

neurons A neuron (American English), neurone (British English), or nerve cell, is an membrane potential#Cell excitability, excitable cell (biology), cell that fires electric signals called action potentials across a neural network (biology), neural net ...

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

Death

In January, 2022, Wallis developed

pneumonia Pneumonia is an Inflammation, inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as Pulmonary alveolus, alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of Cough#Classification, productive or dry cough, ches ...

and was placed on a ventilator at the request of his family, against medical advice due to concerns regarding his quality of life. In order to regain lung function, Wallis needed pulmonary therapy, but the nearest facility equipped to treat his condition was out of state, and he was too weak to handle the ambulance ride. Wallis was transferred to an advanced care facility in

Searcy, Arkansas Searcy ( ) is the largest city in and the 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 Statisti ...

, to receive pulmonary support until he was well enough to travel. Despite best efforts, Wallis died at the facility on March 29, 2022, at the age of 57, due to pulmonary complications.

References

External links