An amateur football player shocked the doctors and his family after he woke up from a coma. Rory Curtis had a football career ahead of him at the age of 22 as he was a teenage striker training under Manchester United’s academy.
In August 2012, he met with an accident and was stuck in a six-car pile-up. After being trapped in the crash wreckage, he was pulled out 40 minutes later. This resulted in severe brain injuries, and doctors had to put him in an induced coma.
He remained in a coma for six days, and when he woke up, he started speaking fluent French. Before this, he only knew how to speak English and had learned French when he was in school. Another thing that happened was that he thought he was ten years old.
He had gaps in his memory where he did not remember that the family dog had died. So he asked his mother about the dog. When he learned about the truth, some parts of his memory came back. Curtis told BBC, ” The second she said that, I put two and two together. I was thinking, ‘Oh, yeah. What am I on about?’ And then I would think I was 12. It was tying the knots together in my brain, in my memory.”
Rory Curtis has quite the story. He’s an amateur footballer who woke from a coma speaking fluent French. Professor Tony Belli (@UoBNeuroOphthal, @InflamAge_UoB) was the neurologist who oversaw Rory’s recovery. Read more on @BBCSport: https://t.co/l7Sld5M5dM
— College of Medicine and Health (UoB) (@unibirm_CMH) June 1, 2020
At one point, he was also convinced that he was Hollywood actor Matthew McConaughey. So he asked when he would go back to filming his next blockbuster movie. He added, “Because I had a broken arm and a broken hip, I had to go to the loo with my mum. and I remember looking in the mirror and not realizing who I was looking at.”
Curtis was discharged in November 2012 after treatment and rehabilitation. But he still had a long way to go in recovery. He was still in a wheelchair. Although his football dreams were crushed, he did make a full recovery in just a year.
He noted, “I can’t remember how soon I was walking,” Curtis says, “but [the doctors] were in shock. And they were shocked that I didn’t have a limp as well. “They advised against playing football because they said I shouldn’t have any hard hits to the head. In my first game, I took an elbow to the face, and my dad nearly jumped onto the pitch.”
He made his career as a hair stylist, a trade that had always been in his family. He also studied to teach barbering at South and City College Birmingham, U.K.
Disclaimer: Inquisitr individually could not independently confirm the facts of this incident and is reporting based on the information available within the public video record.
