I’m caught in 1980: Father who awoke after 39 years in a coma tells how his ‘caught’ reminiscence left him frantically making an attempt to piece his life again collectively and unable to recognise his family members

A father who woke from a coma in 2019 while believing it was still 1980 has said his memory hasn’t budged, describing his life as a well of darkness.

Luciano D’Adamo was involved in a horrific hit-and-run car accident in Rome almost four decades ago, but when he awoke in hospital five years ago, he was met with the shocking revelation that he had lost 39 years of his life.

The father-of-two has now spoken out about the tragic incident and his recovery, which has left him experiencing just ‘flashes of memories’.

Speaking to Corriere Della Serra, D’Adamo recalled waking up from his coma at the Santo Spirito hospital in Rome, where he was asked by doctors who in his family they should inform of his status.

D’Adamo, who still thought he was 23, told the medics to call his mother, explaining he had been in a car crash.

‘I was twenty-three and wanted to go out soon, I had no serious bruises but just a little confusion in my head,’ he told the Italian newspaper.

The doctor asked if he was married, but still mentally stuck in 1980, DAdamo told him he would be marrying his 19-year-old girlfriend soon.

He looked up, surprised, from the medical records and smiled, “Do you understand? Wow, congratulations.” I didn’t understand what the hell there was to laugh about,’ he said.

The confused patient was then quickly introduced to his mother – but he didn’t recognise the woman in the ‘strange’ situation as the hospital quickly brushed it off saying the lady had come into the wrong room.

Another man entered the hospital room, and caught D’Adamo by surprise when he called him Dad. 

‘Here’s the crazy guy, I thought. He must have been thirty, how could he be my son, since I’m twenty-three?, he said.

‘He takes something out of his pocket with some photos on it that he shows me. I don’t recognize any of them, I don’t understand who he is or what he’s talking about’.

D’Adamo then faced himself in the bathroom mirror, where in his mind he was a 23-year-old man but the reflection showed something entirely different.

‘I walk in front of the mirror and look at the person who appears. It’s an elderly gentleman, not me,’ he recalled.

‘It’s someone else. I scream, the nurses come and try to calm me down. I was terrified, it seemed like a horror movie’

The doctors then explained to D’Adamo that it was 2019, but it seemed impossible to him – as for the crash victim, it was still March 20, 1980.

He realised he had lost 39 years of memories, and was in disbelief that he could be ver 60-years-old.

‘The doctors couldn’t explain what was happening to me, they told the lady and the boy that it would pass, that all it took was a lot of patience,’ he said.

But five years have passed since D’Adamao awoke, and he claims that nothing has happened, ‘my memory is stuck on that day in March 1980 and it hasn’t budged from there’.

His wife explained that the accident had happened almost forty years prior, and while she was speaking, he revealed he recognised her.

‘It was her, the nineteen-year-old girl I was going to see on the morning of the accident, at least of “my” accident,; he said, recalling her showing him their wedding photos.

D’Adamo said he still has no memories, but has tried years of reconstructive work at the Santa Lucia Institute where he has attempted to stitch his life back together.

He and his wife prepared folders and notes where they documented anniversaries and other milestones in an effort to jog his memory, but D’Adamo revealed they only sometimes come back to him ‘in the form of flashes’.

He experienced the most intense flashes with two clear memories of the birth of his two sons Simone and Marco.

‘Every detail came back to mind, I saw them again by living them, not simply remembering them,’ he said.

‘My memory is like a jukebox, one of those from the summers of the Seventies. You put in the hundred lire, the records spin, spin, until they stop and only one comes down on the turntable to be listened to’. 

D’Adamo is still adjusting to having a son in his 30s older than he knew himself to be – and is amazed by smartphones and GPS navigation as he refamiliarises himself with a brave new world. 

‘At a certain point I saw that there was a black box that I didn’t understand what it was. Then my wife pushed a button and I realized it was a television screen.,’ he said.

Five years later, the school caretaker is still working with doctors and his family to piece back together the time lost, building new relationships with his wife, son and grandchildren, and slowly reintegrating in 2024.

Today, he says he still has challenges.

‘Sometimes I say that I would like to fly on a plane, I have never done it,’ he told Italian media recently.

‘My wife says to me: “What are you talking about? We were in Paris together.”

‘And I reply: “You have been there, I haven’t.”‘

There has been a lot to relearn. Luciano was a lifelong Roma fan – but woke up with no idea who the club’s iconic forward Francesco Totti was, or the titles won in 1982-83 and 2000-01.

He does not recall the September 11 attacks, or the Berlusconi years closer to home.

Luciano’s last memories before the accident were of working as a ground operations officer at Fiumicino airport on March 20, 1980.

He has started over, working in a school. And he has found some acceptance that he is no longer a young man and cannot run up the stairs as he used to.

Luciano still has no compensation for the accident in 2019, nor any idea exactly what happened.

The hit-and-run driver fled and was never found. 

‘I am not happy. I cannot be. I found out that my mother died and I don’t even remember when I went to her funeral. One of my brothers, there are four of us left, I didn’t even recognise him,’ he recalled.

‘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’.