The victim of a horrific hit-and-run car accident is recovering after waking up from a coma convinced it was still 1980.
Luciano D’Adamo’s last memories are of leaving his Rome house in March 1980, feeling a sudden violent blow and then seeing darkness.
Waking up in hospital a few days later, he was traumatised to learn the accident had happened in 2019, and found himself with no recollection of the past four decades.
Luciano did not recognise himself in the mirror as a man of 63, nor – at first – the aged ‘stranger’ coming to visit him: his wife.
As far as he knew, she was still the 19-year-old fiancée he was hoping to marry as a young man, transformed by age and a life together he no longer remembered.
Luciano 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.
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.
Luciano D’Adamo woke up in 2019 after a car accident and had forgotten the last 39 years
His last memories are of being a 24-year-old airport worker in 1980
The recovery has been a long journey for Luciano, now 68, who has steadily retrieved some memories in the years since waking up.
He now works in a school, having steadily refamiliarised 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 told Il Messaggero recently.
Immediately after waking up in 2019, he asked to call his mother. He did not know the strange mobile device he was given – or that his mother had died.
Luciano also found it challenging politely greeting hospital visitors – ‘old friends’ he has known for years – and not recognising them.
When his wife walked 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 seeing his 30-year-old son.
But the most painful experience for Luciano was seeing himself in the mirror, the outlet reports.
He had lost the memories of steadily ageing over four decades and was horrified to see an old man with grey hair looking back at him.
While Luciano had aged, the lost memories had also wiped his experience.
He found it easy to get on with children, Corriere della Sera reports, but needed help relearning how to socialise as a grandfather, and not a 24-year-old.
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.
Doctors and psychologists have worked with Luciano’s wife and son over the last five years to help him overcome the gaps in his memory, with some progress.
Luciano does not remember Totti leading Roma to victory in the 2000-01 Serie A season
Luciano worked at Fumicino airport in 1980 – and has had to readjust to 4 decades of change
The only memories that have come back are a drawing of a stork, the name Matteo, a date, a time and the writing ‘PN 2300’ – the tag on the crib of his first grandchild, born in 2014.
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.
