Flop Bott: Review of Book: Ghost Boy- about Boy Trapped in Body

(Star courtesy of Kurt Knudsen on etsy.)

It is George Washington's B-day as I write this little review about Martin Pistorius (the man who wrote: Ghost Boy. A book about a boy from South Africa who broke from the prison, which was his body, after suffering a bizarre illness.

This man is quickly becoming someone that brings tears to my eyes.

It isn't about that Olympian Dude with the same name. So back to my self imposed book review in order to keep my brain trying and pushing itself after the latest whiplash. I think the Ocscars are going on and there is even a movie about it or something I noticed as I went into Yahoo.

(Kurt Knudsen's etsy store sells this fav: The Jefferson.)

Any- hoo;

One day this normal, healthy young boy came home with a sore throat. Eventually his body shut down into a complete coma with just a blank stare left in his eyes. Doctors told his parents that he was unable to think more than a two or three year old, treated him for TB and another infectious disease. So his mom quit working and took care of her son for a year.

Can you imagine? One year. Then two. Martin didn't die. He lived. But he may as well be dead because, as he put explained what transpired was as if he were in a show about a person who had died but didn't realize they died; everyone talked about him to him, but never SAW him in there. He may as well have been a ghost boy.

(I like the denim look of this one.... courtesy Kurt Knudsen on etsy)

The coma lasted for four years.

Doctors assured his mom, Joan, that he would likely die in a couple years; keep him as comfortable as possible- he would die. But he didn't. In fact, he came back from his dark coma. Slowly he was aware. More aware than the Barney, Lion King and Teletubby re-runs that played over and over at the Care Center that he was taken religiously by his father. - A father he realized was his but didn't remember. Yet, he could recall being glad he wasn't born and living in Greenland where there was no light like there was in South Africa.

He had so much time on his hands to stare at the shadows on the floor, that he learned to tell time by where it was and when a person would ask what time it was. He mastered the clock.

Unable to tell his parents that he was there, inside his body, he was imprisoned in the silence of his life, the inability to tell someone he was too hot or food was too hot, that his body hurt from being in a certain position for some time: for 9 years.

Eventually a woman who worked as a massage therapist came to work on his gnarled hands and feet, his tight calves, legs of his contorted body. He literally was closing in on himself.