Category Archives: writers and brain injury

HE WOULD NOT WAKE UP PROPERLY FOR 38 DAYS!

From: STIRLING MOSS: The Authorised Biography by Robert Edwards (Published by Cassell & Co, UK)

Stirling Moss was in a coma for 38 days in Atkinson Morley Hospital, London
And many people throughout the world prayed for the star driver’s healing… a collective appeal to Christ. Perhaps one of them was even a concerned young boy in Clovelly, Cape Town, South Africa.
Moss’s inability to speak was confusing, although the physical injuries were more familiar.
He did not immediately notice that he was effectively paralysed. The physical damage to the left side of his body was made worse by the fact he could not move it, the massive bruising his brain had received had to heal first. This would be frustrating to say the least, particularly since the extent of his injuries were not initially revealed to him. The patient assumed that he could not move because he was injured, rather than because his brain would simply not allow it. His friend, David Haynes finally revealed the truth; although it depressed Stirling, it also caused him to fight his condition harder, initially to no avail.
The neurology department closely monitored his progress. And these are the words of one occupational therapist:
“We didn’t know very much about motor racing, of course; but none of us really thought he would ever drive again – he had been so very badly hurt, but he tried so hard.”
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