I’m stuck in 1980: Father who woke up after 39 years in a coma tells how his ‘stuck’ memory left him frantically trying to piece his life back together and unable to recognise his loved ones

A father who woke from a coma in 2019 believing it was still 1980 has said his memory has not changed, describing his life as a source of darkness.

Luciano D’Adamo was involved in a horrific car accident in Rome almost 40 years ago, but when he woke up in hospital five years ago, he had 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 only ‘flashes of memories’.

Speak with Corriere Della SerraD’Adamo recalled waking from his coma at Santo Spirito Hospital in Rome, where he was asked by doctors who in his family they should inform about his status.

D’Adamo, still thinking he was 23, told doctors to call his mother and explained that he had been in a car accident.

‘I was twenty-three and wanted to go out quickly. “I didn’t have any serious bruises, just a little confusion in my head,” he told the Italian newspaper.

The doctor asked if he was married, but in 1980 he was still mentally stuck. D’Adamo told him he would soon marry his 19-year-old girlfriend.

He looked up from the medical records in surprise and smiled, “Do you understand? Wow, congratulations.” “I didn’t understand what I was laughing about,” he said.

The confused patient was then quickly introduced to his mother, but he did not recognize the woman in the ‘strange’ situation as the hospital quickly shrugged it off saying the lady had entered the wrong room.

Another man entered the hospital room and surprised D’Adamo by calling 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 pictures on it and shows me. I don’t recognize any of them, I don’t understand who he is and what he’s talking about.’

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

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

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

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

He realized he had lost 39 years of memories and couldn’t believe he could live to be 60 years old.

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

But five years have passed since D’Adamao woke up, and he claims nothing has happened. ‘My memory is stuck on that day in March 1980 and has never left it’.

His wife explained that the accident had occurred almost forty years ago, and as she was talking, he revealed that he recognized her.

‘It was her, the nineteen-year-old girl I was going to visit on the morning of the accident, or at least of ‘my’ accident; he said, remembering her showing him their wedding photos.

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

He and his wife made folders and notes documenting anniversaries and other milestones in an attempt to jog his memory, but D’Adamo revealed that they only come back to him occasionally “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 my mind, I saw them again by experiencing them, and not just by remembering them,” he said.

‘My memory is like a jukebox, one from the summers of the seventies. You put a hundred lira in, the records spin, spin, until they stop and only one ends up on the turntable for you to listen to.”

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

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

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.

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.

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.

‘I’m not happy. That can’t be me. I found out my mother had died and I don’t even remember when I went to her funeral. One of my brothers, there are still four of us, I didn’t even recognize him,” he recalled.

‘I fight, I have a good character. But I’ve only lived a third of my life. Thirty-nine years are in the dark.

‘I have learned that only memory is the life lived.

“The rest flies in the wind.”