Jan Grzebski

Who was Jan Grzebski?

Jan Grzebski was a Polish railroad worker who fell into a coma in 1988 and woke up in 2007. Although widely reported as a delayed effect of being hit in the head by a train's hinged car side, the coma was actually the result of a 5-centimeter brain tumor. Over time, Grzebski's aging caused the tumor to shrink enough to relieve pressure on his brain stem, and he eventually regained full consciousness. Grzebski began to wake from his coma in 2006. Doctors had not expected Grzebski to survive, let alone emerge from the coma. He credited his survival to his wife, Gertruda Grzebska, who cared and prayed for him. Grzebski was a father of four at the time of the accident. While in a coma he gained eleven grandchildren. In an interview on 1 June 2007, with the Polish news channel TVN 24, wheelchair-bound Grzebski described his recollections of the communist system's economic collapse. "When my family spoke to me, I could actually hear them but I could not talk back. I could not send them a signal to tell them that I was still alive."

He was featured in the Ripley's Believe It or Not! comic strip for 27 August 2007.