Beljium: A Man Comes Back From Coma After 23 years - A paralyzed Belgian man who spent the past 23 years incorrectly diagnosed as being in a vegetative state, was fully conscious and could hear everything around him the entire time. The man, Rom Houben, can finally communicate. Doctors had assumed the 1983 car crash that paralyzed Houben, now 46, had also put him in a vegetative state awake but not conscious of his surroundings.