Terry Wayne Wallis (April 7, 1964 – March 29, 2022) was an American man from the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas who, on June 11, 2003, regained awareness after spending 19 years in a minimally conscious state.
[1] On July 13, 1984, Wallis was driving his pickup truck with two passengers when it smashed into a railing fence on a small bridge near Stone County, Arkansas, and skidded over the edge.
[2] His muscles remained weak but he gradually experienced limited recovery over a three-day "awakening period" in which he regained the ability to control some parts of his body and to speak to others.
Doctors believe that this stimulation contributed to his awakening period.”[6] Wallis was the subject of the BodyShock special for 2005 "The Man Who Slept for 19 Years" made for Channel 4 in the UK.
The program featured several prominent physicians, including Caroline McCagg, the medical director of the JFK Center for head injury in New Jersey; Joe Giacino, a neuropsychologist who said that Wallis' brain retained a lot of information from before 1984 but little after 1984 because he had lost the ability to store new memories, a condition known as anterograde amnesia; and Martin Gizzi, a neurologist who showed that damage to the frontal lobes made Wallis unable to process experiences into memories.