A teacher who has been in a coma for 10 months has shown the first signs of recovery - he began to cry on hearing his fiancee's voice on the telephone.
Mathew Taylor was critically injured after a horrific motorbike crash in Bali last July - and doctors warned his family that the 31-year-old might never regain consciousness.
He had met Anda Nurul, 27, when he moved to Indonesia to teach English in 2009, 18 months before the accident.
The pair got engaged, but then tragedy struck and Mr Taylor fractured his skull in the dramatic crash and had to have his eye socket reconstructed using a bone taken from his thigh.
Mr Taylor had no medical insurance, so his devastated family had to raise £100,000 for his treatment in Bali.
His father, Darrell Taylor, used £50,000 of his savings to pay for the treatment while his stepfather Simon Moore remortgaged his house to find the other half.
Mr Taylor was transferred to the Royal Derby Hospital, close to his parents' home in Overseal, Derbyshire last October.
His family has kept a bedside vigil ever since, but Bali-born Anda - whose full name is Handayani - was only granted a three-month visa to be with her fiance after his local MP appealed to the Home Office.
The 27-year-old, who studies Dutch Literature at the University of Indonesia, was forced to move back home and leave her unconscious fiance behind after her visa ran out.
But after an agonising wait, Mr Taylor finally showed signs of life three weeks ago - after his family held the telephone to his ear so Ms Nurul could speak to him.
His mother Heather and stepfather Mr Moore were speechless with shock when he moved his hand towards the phone and tears began streaming down his face.
Mr Moore said: 'Heather calls Anda while we are with Mathew and as soon as he hears her voice he lifts his hand for the phone.
'He listens to her and you can see this change in him. He had tears in his eyes as he held the phone to his ear. She asked him something and he said a silent yes. 'Then tears were coming down his face. It was brilliant.'
Now, Mr Taylor is making a slow but steady recovery, and the family hope he will eventually be ready for the wedding of his dreams.
'He's really come on the past three weeks,' said Mr Moore.
'He is still in a low awareness coma but he moves his hand left and right when the phone rings.
'We are so pleased he is recovering.
'We spend most of our days at hospital and some days are good and others bad but we take what we can get. We are just happy he is responding.'
Luke Griggs, spokesman for brain injury charity Headway, said today that Mr Taylor could well make a full recovery.
'Coma arousal programmes are often used to try to stimulate patients who are in reduced states of consciousness, such as a coma or a persistent vegetative state,' he said.
These carefully planned periods of stimulation - in the form of sound, touch, smell and taste - are combined with periods of complete rest in order not to overload the person's senses. 'While each individual case is different, in general terms the longer a person remains in a state of reduced consciousness, the less likely they are to make a full recovery.
'We have heard of several examples of people waking from comas and going on to make good recoveries and live happy, fulfilled lives.
'The amount and type of information a person can process while in a reduced state of consciousness will vary from case to case and accurately diagnosing someone's level of consciousness is notoriously difficult.
'However, examples like this demonstrate that coma arousal - or stimulation - programmes may well be effective.'
Courtesy- http://www.dailymail.co.uk
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