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Woman wakes up after 27 years in coma, calls out her son's name

A car crash in 1991 left her in a vegetative state, but recently she started responding to others.
Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto
Clinical ward with patient in coma, unfocused background.

A woman who was in a "vegetative coma" for 27 years after a crash is now able to speak with her family, her doctors said.

CBS reports Munira Abdulla of the United Arab Emirates was with her son in 1991 when a school bus collided with her car. She was in a state of minimal consciousness after that.

German doctor Friedemann Mueller, who treated Abdulla, said she has shown improvement recently.

Her son said she started responding to others in the room and reciting verses from the Quran. One day, he said she woke him up by calling his name.

"It was her. She was calling my name. I was flying with joy. For years I have dreamt of this moment, and my name was the first word she said," Omar Webair, 32, told The National, a UAE news service. 

He was four when the crash happened. His only injury was a bruise to the head because his mother hugged him to protect him from the impact.

Mueller said after Abdulla was taken to Germany for treatment, doctors began a different kind of treatment, changing her drugs and introducing stimuli such as the sound of birds.

"Don't consider them dead when they are in such a state," Webair told The National. "All those years, the doctors told me she was a hopeless case and that there was no point of the treatment I was seeking for her, but whenever in doubt I put myself in her place and did whatever I could to improve her condition." 

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