Eight Prime Ministers, one terrorist attack, ten generations of iPhones — these are some of the things one would miss if they had been in a coma for the past fifteen years. In 2002, a twenty-year-old, unnamed, French man was in a car accident that put him in a vegetative state for fifteen years. Now at the age of thirty-five, he has lost a major portion of his life. The man’s personal status and name are left confidential due to doctor-patient confidentiality policies.

This shocking discovery came as neurosurgeons figured out a way to stimulate the vagus nerve inside the patient’s brain. In a quote from CNN, “Vagus nerve stimulation begins with a surgeon implanting a device in the chest and threading a wire under the skin. This wire joins the vagus nerve and the device, which sends electrical signals along the nerve to the brain stem and in turn this transmits impulses to certain areas in the brain.” This kind of medical technology is changing the recovery outlook for patients thought to be in irreversible comatose states.

Before the man was selected for this experiment, he had not shown any signs of life since his car accident, and now he is somewhat starting to function like a normal human being again. In a quote from Dr. Gizmodo who performed the experimental procedure, “The patient’s behavior on the “Coma Recovery Scale” went from 5 to 10 (the maximum score is a 23), with the greatest increases in how his eyes reacted to stimuli.”

With such great medical advances, this man may start his journey toward recovery, and other comatose patients could be forever changed by this new technology.