The family of a firefighter who spent almost ten years in a state of minimal consciousness, only to suddenly regain awareness, shared the emotional moment he woke up, which was captured on camera. It was an incredible and deeply moving experience for those who loved him.
Donald Herbert was just 34 years old when his world was turned upside down. While bravely responding to a house fire in Buffalo, New York, back in December of 1995, he suffered a life-changing injury.
During the rescue operation, the roof of the burning building collapsed, trapping the father of four under a heavy pile of debris. The weight nearly suffocated him as he lay pinned and helpless.
Deprived of oxygen for several critical minutes, he was eventually pulled from the wreckage by his fellow firefighters. But by the time his wife Linda arrived at the hospital, Donald was already in a coma, and the full extent of his injuries was unknown.
Speaking with Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes in 2007, Linda recalled her heartache, sharing: “I remember pleading and begging with him in the hospital when he was unresponsive.”
“Don’t leave me, don’t leave the kids, we need you.”
One of Don’s sons described the anguish they felt during that time, saying: “You try to get them to squeeze your hand or move a toe or something like that…we were looking for just about anything.”
About a year after the incident, Don eventually emerged from his coma. However, he faced severe challenges: his speech, vision, and mobility were all affected, and he required help even with eating.
The tragedy deepened as Donald struggled to recall much of his past and failed to recognize even his closest loved ones. Within a few months, he drifted into a state of minimal consciousness, a condition where he could react to certain stimuli but couldn’t actively communicate.
This minimal consciousness meant that while Donald could sometimes respond or show limited awareness, he was otherwise unreachable. The accident had also left him completely blind, making communication and connection incredibly difficult.
Ultimately, his family made the difficult decision to move him to a nursing home. Here, he could receive around-the-clock care, though it meant he’d rely on a feeding tube for survival. Medical professionals advised Linda to begin letting go of hope.
She told Cooper, reflecting on a moment with a neurologist: “I took him to one neurologist and I was basically begging him, you know, to tell me, ‘Is he gonna get better, or isn’t he?'”
“And he just sort of said, ‘Well, look at him. What do you see? You see what I see, there’s nothing there’. And I was just devastated.”
One of his sons spoke candidly about how seeing their father in such a helpless state was “sickening,” while another admitted that adjusting to his dad’s minimal consciousness was something they could never truly accept.
After more than nine long years, everything changed when Don suddenly woke up on April 30, 2005. His first question? He asked where his family was, in an extraordinary moment of clarity that no one had expected.
Family members and old firefighter friends hurried to the nursing home, where a nurse handed them a video camera to capture the incredible and emotional “awakening” of Don.
“How long have I been gone?”
Now 43, Don struggled to speak after nearly a decade of silence, and his blindness forced him to identify friends and family by their voices alone.
In the touching video, his sons are seen hugging their father as he asks: “How long have I been gone?”
A lot had changed over the years he’d been “gone.” One of the most significant changes was the growth of his youngest son, Nick, who had been only four years old at the time of Don’s injury.
Nick recounted an emotional moment when Don tried to measure his height, remembering: “He still thought that I was really young and he went to put his hand out over me to see how tall I was,”
“We just kept telling him to raise his hand higher, because he was trying to feel for me down low.”
“He felt like he abandoned us”
In another deeply emotional exchange, Don became visibly distressed when he asked again how long he had been “gone.” Upon learning that it had been close to ten years, he began to weep, overcome by the revelation.
Linda later explained that “He felt so bad,” and continued, “He felt like he abandoned us, he felt so bad that he wasn’t there for the boys.”
Don’s uncle, Simon Manka, shared with the Associated Press that Don seemed to believe he’d only been unconscious for about three months, further adding to the emotional weight of his awakening.
Donald’s incredible recovery shocked medical experts worldwide. Specialists noted that cases of such recovery from severe brain injuries, especially after so many years, are incredibly rare, if not unheard of.
Many believe that Don’s revival may have been due to a new mix of medications he was prescribed. These drugs were typically used to treat conditions like Parkinson’s disease, ADHD, and depression, and could have played a role in his unexpected awakening.
Tragically, despite his miraculous return to consciousness, Donald passed away less than a year later, on February 21, 2006.
Though he experienced moments of alertness, he ultimately succumbed after suffering another brain injury from a fall, followed by a bout of pneumonia that claimed his life. His passing marked the end of a remarkable and heart-rending journey for both him and his loved ones.
