What would you do if your brain switched off and shut down for four years? And when your brain finally switches back on again you find that you are completely paralysed. Unable to speak or move anything other than your eyes. You can can see, you can feel and you can think. But that is all.
Well that is exactly what happened to a young 12 year old boy in Pretoria, South Africa in 1988. His name is Martin Pistorius and amazingly he has written a book, “Ghost Boy”, about his experiences.
But wait, it’s worse than that. In those four unconscious years the doctors treating Martin, not unreasonably, decided that he no longer had brain function. That he was in a vegetative state and in need of physical care only.
Now Martin is a happily married man with a wife and a job and dreams and hopes for the future.
“Ghost Boy” leads us through all the varied and difficult steps that Martin has had to take. Some physical, but mostly emotional, challenges that seem impossible for a human being to withstand let alone overcome. It is a harrowing journey with some of the very best and some of the very worst aspects of human behaviour, along the way.
Underlying the litany of physical handicaps and Martin’s courage in addressing them is the central, niggling core of the story. What is that spark of humanity? What is human consciousness?
At the End of the Day 