The life of a hit-and-run victim took a surreal turn when he emerged from a decades-long coma, only to discover a world that feels completely foreign and unrecognizable to him.
When Luciano D’Adamo woke up for the first time from his coma, he firmly believed it was the year 1980 and that he was still a 24-year-old airport worker.
He also believed he was still engaged to his 19-year-old fiancée.
After decades in a coma, Luciano D’Adamo woke up to a world that was both astonishing and alien to him
The Italian man was baffled to discover that he was 63 years old and had stumbled into the technologically advanced world of 2019, the year he woke up from his coma.
Luciano’s last vivid memory was stepping out of his house in Rome in March 1980, feeling a sudden, violent jolt that plunged him into darkness. He was the victim of a hit-and-run case that remains unsolved.
When he regained consciousness in 2019, he found that even the man staring back at him in the mirror was a stranger. Moreover, he could not recognize his wife or son, who is now in his 30s.
The man in his 60s firmly believed that he woke up in the year 1980 and was still a 24-year-old man, engaged to a 19-year-old fiancée
Five years later, the now-68-year-old man spoke about being dumbstruck by modern technology and how he had to learn to use a smartphone.
“I still remember the amazement of traveling in a car that showed me a map of Rome on a screen, or rather the Tuttocittà as we once called it, while a voice said: “In 100 meters turn right,”‘ he told Il Messaggero, as quoted by the Daily Mail.
Apart from the fancy devices around him, Luciano could also not recognize the faces around him when he woke up from his coma.
The 19-year-old fiancée from his memory had aged, just like him, and became a “stranger.”
Five years after waking up from his coma in 2019, the now 68-year-old spoke about adjusting to his new life, having missed out on decades of experiences with his loved ones
“She called me Luciano and I wondered how she knew my name,” he recalled.
He also had to accept that he was a father to a man in his 30s and a grandfather.
Over the past five years, Luciano has been acclimatizing to his new world and filling in the gaps in his memories, wiped clean over the last four decades.
He is currently employed at a school and continues to work with doctors on his memory issues.