Brain-injured firefighter's brief awakening

'Gone' for 10 years
The book offers a look inside Herbert's room at the nursing facility as the overwhelmed firefighter, able to recognize people by their voices, learned he had been "gone" for 10 years:

"We've been here for you the whole time," (Linda) said.

"How old am I?"

"Forty-three," Linda said.

"Oh, my God," Donny said. He was smiling through his tears now.

Linda Herbert has been reluctant to talk publicly about that remarkable time, but in her south Buffalo home on a recent morning, after finishing crossing guard duties at an elementary school, she expressed awe at the worldwide interest her family's story had generated. Calls from around the globe poured into her home.

A large portrait of her husband, smiling from his wheelchair and surrounded by his sons, hangs on a kitchen wall. It was taken on her husband's last birthday, May 7, 2005, a week after he'd begun to talk. It had been years since her four sons had been so closely bonded.

Their mother would observe that bond again months later in the hospital room, where they surrounded their father as he lay dying.

"They were all there. They were all able to talk to him, hold him, even though he was unresponsive," she said. "They were the ones that said, 'Dad, it's enough. We're going to be OK, don't worry about it.'"

"I always looked at them as, these are my kids,'" she said. "But they had really grown into men and I thought, they are very good kids, and Don had nothing to worry about and he knew that."

Medicine, religion, Don's will credited
Linda Herbert hopes telling her story will draw attention to brain injuries, offering hope and underlining the need for medical advances and advice for caregivers. She'd had to spend hours at the library, scraping for what little information was available.

Her husband's turnaround came after a doctor, a rehabilitation specialist named Jamil Ahmed, began experimenting with a mixture of drugs usually used to treat Parkinson's disease, depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Whether the medicine triggered his awakening is still being studied.

Before doctors had a chance to fully explore the drugs' effects, Herbert fell from his bed at the nursing facility and suffered bleeding on his brain that severely slowed his progress.

Some attribute Herbert's awakening to spiritual factors. The nursing facility is named for the Rev. Nelson Baker, a local Roman Catholic priest who died in 1936 and has been proposed for sainthood. Some credit his intervention.

"I still say it was Don's will more than anything else," Linda Herbert said. "I really believe that he had enough will to break out of that for that moment in time.

"He sort of came to check in on us, make sure we were all behaving. And if we weren't," she said, laughing, "he probably would have stuck around."

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