Man is hit by a car… and wakes up in 1980: Father, 63, stirs from coma believing he is 24 after losing 39 years of memories – and is now living in a sci-fi reality baffled by smartphones and a son ‘older than he is’

The victim of a horrific car crash recovers after waking from a coma believing it was still 1980.

Luciano D’Adamo’s last memories are of leaving his home in Rome in March 1980, feeling a sudden violent blow and then seeing darkness.

When he woke up in the hospital a few days later, he was traumatized to learn that the accident had occurred in 2019. himself with no memory of the past forty years.

Luciano did not recognize himself in the mirror as a 63-year-old man, nor – at first – the elderly ‘stranger’ who came to visit him: his wife.

As far as he knew, she was still the 19-year-old fiancée he hoped to marry as a young man, transformed by age and a life together he no longer remembered.

Still adjusting to having a 30-something son who is older than he knew – Luciano is amazed by smartphones and GPS navigation as he reacquaints himself with a brave new world.

Five years later, the school janitor is still working with doctors and his family to make up for lost time, build new relationships with his wife, son and grandchildren, and slowly reintegrate in 2024.

Recovery has been a long journey for Luciano, now 68, who has been steadily reminiscing in the years since he woke up.

He now works in a school, having steadily reacquainted 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 the Tuttocittà as we once called it, while a voice said: ‘In 100 meters turn right’, he said to Il Messaggero. recently.

Immediately after waking up in 2019, he asked if he could call his mother. He didn’t know what strange mobile device he was getting – or that his mother had died.

Luciano also found it a challenge to politely greet hospital visitors – “old friends” he has known for years – and not recognize them.

When his wife came in, she was “a stranger.”

“She called me Luciano and I wondered how she knew my name,” he said.

As far as he knew, it was the first time he had seen his 30-year-old son.

But the most painful experience for Luciano was seeing herself in the mirror, the outlet reports.

He had lost the memories of steadily aging over the past four decades and was shocked to see an old man with gray hair looking back at him.

Although Luciano had grown older, the lost memories had also wiped away his experience.

He was easy with children, Corriere della Sera reportsbut needed help relearning how to socialize as a grandfather, and not as a 24-year-old.

Today, he says he still faces challenges.

“Sometimes I say I would like to fly in a plane, but I have never done that,” he recently told Italian media.

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

“And I answer, ‘You’ve been there, I haven’t.'”

A lot has been relearned. A lifelong Roma fan, Luciano woke up with no idea who the club’s iconic striker Francesco Totti was, or what titles he won in 1982-83 and 2000-01.

He doesn’t remember the September 11 attacks, or Berlusconi’s years closer to home.

Doctors and psychologists have worked with Luciano’s wife and son over the past five years to help him overcome the gaps in his memory, and some progress has been made.

The only memories that come back are a drawing of a stork, the name Matteo, a date, a time and the inscription ‘PN 2300’ – the picture on the cradle of his first grandchild, born in 2014.

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

He has started again and works at a school. And he has found some acceptance of that he is no longer a young man and can no longer run up the stairs as he used to.

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

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