The victim of a horrific car accident is recovering after waking up from a coma convinced it was still 1980. Luciano D’Adamo’s last memory is of leaving his home in Rome in March 1980, feeling a sudden stroke of violently and then seeing darkness. Waking up in hospital a few days later, he was traumatized to learn that the accident had happened 39 years ago and found himself with no memory of the past four decades.
Luciano did not recognize himself in the mirror as a 63-year-old man. A girl often came to visit him. As far as he knew, she was still the 19-year-old fiancée he’d hoped to marry as a young man, transformed by age and no longer keeping her. Luciano is still adjusting and is fascinated by smartphones and GPS navigation as he is introduced to a brave new world. Five years later, the school custodian is still working with doctors and his family to make up for lost time, building new relationships with his wife, son and grandchildren and slowly reintegrating in 2024. Recovery has been a journey long for Luciano, now 68, who has repeatedly brought back several memories in the years since the awakening.
Now he works in a school, having constantly familiarized himself with modern customs and technology. “I still remember the amazement of traveling in a car that showed me a map of Rome on a screen, or rather Tuttocittà as we used to call it, while a voice said: ‘In 100 meters turn right.’ Shortly after waking up in 2019, he asked to call his mother. He didn’t know about the strange mobile device he was given or that his mother was dead.
Luciano also found it a challenge to politely greet visitors to the hospital when he did not know them. When his wife came in, she was a ‘stranger’. “She called me Luciano and I wondered how she knew my name,” he said. But the most painful experience for Luciano was seeing himself in the mirror. He was horrified to see an old man with gray hair. As Luciano had aged, his lost memories had also erased his experience. He found it easy to get on with the children, reports Corriere della Sera, but needed help relearning how to socialize as a grandfather rather than a 24-year-old. “Sometimes I say that I would like to fly by plane, I have never done it,” he recently told the Italian media. “My wife says to me: “What are you talking about? We were together in Paris”. “And I reply: ‘You’ve been there, I haven’t.’ There was a lot to relearn. Luciano was a lifelong Roma fan but woke up with no idea who the club’s iconic striker Francesco Totti was, or the titles won in 1982-83 and 2000-01. “Tosca” by Puccini, with two versions at the National Theater of Opera and Ballet.
He doesn’t remember the 9/11 attacks, or the Berlusconi years closer to home. Doctors and psychologists have been working with Luciano’s wife and son for the past five years to help him overcome gaps in his memory, with some progress. The only memories that have returned are a drawing of a stork, the name Matteo, a date, a time and the writing ‘PN 2300’. Luciano’s last memory before the accident was working as a ground operations officer at Fiumicino Airport on March 20, 1980. He started over, working in a school. He has found some acceptance that he is no longer a young man and cannot climb the stairs like he used to. Luciano still has no compensation for the accident, nor any idea what exactly happened. The hit-and-run driver fled and was never found.