A dad left in a coma in 2019 after a hit-and-run woke up thinking the year was 1980 and that he was 23 years old.
Luciano D’Adamo, 68, from Italy, didn’t recognise his wife or son when they came to visit him after he regained consciousness.
The Italian did not even know that his mother had died, as he asked the doctor to call her when he woke up in hospital.
‘I found out that my mother died and I don’t even remember when I went to her funeral,’ he said in a recent interview with the Italian daily Corriere Della Sera.
D’Adamo had no recollection of being married, telling his doctor he had a 19-year-old girlfriend instead.
When an older woman came in and addressed him as Luciano, the 68-year-old was left ‘speechless’ and could not believe she was actually his wife.
Similarly, he did not understand how a 30-year-old man could be his son.
Speaking about the encounter, D’Adamo said: ‘After a while a guy comes in, all agitated, and says to me “Hi dad, how are you?”.
‘“Here’s the crazy guy,” I thought. He must have been thirty, how could he be my son since I’m twenty-three?’
D’adamo was also shocked when he looked in the mirror and saw that he was no longer a 23-year-old man.
‘It’s an elderly gentleman, not me,’ said D’Adamo reflecting on the moment he saw himself for the first time after the crash. ‘I scream, the nurses come and try to calm me down. I was terrified, it seemed like a horror movie.’
Unfortunately, the 68-year-old believed it was 1980, meaning 39 years of his life had been erased from his memory.
‘For me, it was March 20 1980,’ D’Adamo said.
‘I remembered it very well. I had finished my shift at Fiumicino (airport) where I worked. I had gone home, then I had gone out and a car had hit me in Monte Mario.’
In fact, the real incident happened on February 6, 2019 while D’Adamo was putting rubbish in a bin outside his place of work and a driver crashed into him.
Doctors are still helping D’Adamo piece his life back together.
His wife is also trying to jog his memory by showing him folders with photographs and videos of the 39 years he can no longer recall.
He said he can now vaguely remember the birth of his two sons and described his memory as a jukebox from the seventies.
‘You put the coin in, the records spin, spin, until they stop and only one comes down on the turntable to be listened to,’ D’Adamo said.
An avid football fan, D’Adamo can’t remember the two titles his beloved Roma won in 1983 and 2001 – and woke up with no idea who legendary Roma player Francesco Totti was. Italy’s World Cup victories in 1982 and 2006 also had to be shown to him by his son.
He could not recall the September 11 attacks and did not know who Silvio Berlusconi was.
D’Adamo’s wife even had to tell him about a time they flew to Paris together because he did not remember ever being on a plane or visiting the French capital.
D’Adamo now works in a school and has not received compensation from the hit-and-run. The driver who hit him has never been found.
Speaking about his adjustment to the situation, D’Adamo said: ‘I am not happy, I cannot be. I fight, I have a good character. But I have only lived a third of my life. Thirty-nine years are in the dark.
‘I have learned that only memory is life lived. The rest flies in the wind.’
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