Martin Pistorius, now 48, returned home from school with a scratchy throat one day.

Doctors first assumed he had the flu and treated him accordingly. Pistorius’ condition deteriorated gradually, and he was finally hospitalized at the age of 12.

“I tested positive for cryptococcal meningitis and tuberculosis of the brain, and I was treated for both,” he said to LADbible. “My body became weakened, and I lost the ability to speak and control my movements.”

Pistorius was in a vegetative condition, which he explains in his book Ghost Boy, published in 2012.

Joan and Rodney Pistorius were not provided with a definitive reason why their son’s body shut down. They were unwilling to give up on him and kept him alive in a care facility.

This time in his life, according to Pistorius, was like “an empty shell, unaware of anything around me.”

He began to ‘wake up’ four years later, as he described: “I remember around my 16th birthday people talking about the stubble on my chin and wondering whether to shave me.”

“I could hear, see, and understand everything around me,” he says, “but I had no power or control over anything.”

“That feeling of complete and utter powerlessness is probably the worst I’ve ever felt, and I hope I never have to experience it again.” It’s as if you don’t even exist because everyone in your life has already decided what will happen.

Nobody realized Pistorius had recovered consciousness and was aware of his surroundings. He also recalls being forced to watch reruns of Barney in the special care center.

“I cannot even express how much I despised Barney,” he said in an interview with NPR.

Joan Pistorius, Pistorius’ mother, claims she struggled to accept her son’s condition.

He recalls being in his wheelchair one day when his mother remarked to him, “I hope you die.”

The remark touched him and left him feeling “very sad and upset,” and he “understood where that was coming from.”

He’d use his imagination to retain his sanity: “I’d imagine all sorts of things, like being very small and climbing into a spaceship and flying away.” Or that my wheelchair would morph into a flying machine.

“I would sometimes watch things move, such as how the sun moved throughout the day.” Or watching insects dart around, but I actually lived in my thoughts to the point that I was ignorant to the world around me.”

When Pistorius was 25, Virna van der Walt, a relief caretaker at the day facility, convinced his parents to take him to the facility For Augmentative And Alternative Communication at the University of Pretoria.

A researcher brought out a sheet of paper with symbols on it and asked him to identify a ball with his eyes. After locating the form, he was instructed to locate the dog.

He was able to disclose that he was aware and able to converse about 13 years after being ill.

His parents bought a computer that had communication software on it, similar to what the late theoretical scientist Stephen Hawking used.

Pistorius would use a mouse-like band attached to his head to pick up letters, words, or symbols on the gadget.

He began working at the care center alongside van der Walt in 2003, when he met the love of his life, Joanna, a social worker. They married in Essex in 2009.

Sebastian Albert Pistorius, their son, was born in 2018, and Pistorius frequently posts images of his family on Instagram.

Pistorius is currently employed as a computer scientist and web developer.