Farm animals save Mark's life

by Sumana Saparamadu

This is a true story reported in a newspaper two or three years ago.

Mark Anderson was an 18-year-old student following a course in agriculture. He was living on their little farm in a village in Leeds, England.

Late one evening as he was returning home, a stone hit him on the head. Did someone aim it at him or was it thrown at someone or something else?

The stone hit him so hard that he fell unconscious.

A neighbour who saw Mark lying unconscious on the grass informed his mother and helped her to take him to hospital.

The stone had not only injured his head. It had hit his cheek and hurt a jaw bone. He was short of breath. With immediate attention his lungs began functioning again and he started breathing normally.

But Mark did not regain consciousness for two weeks he lay stiff in bed. He did not move or open his eyes, or show any sign that he heard what was said by his bedside or any sound in the room. The only sign of life was his breathing in and out.

Mark's mother was sad and upset, thinking that her son would be like this forever.

One day the doctors told the mother, "If your son hears familiar sounds - sounds he is used to hearing everyday - that part of the brain that is not functioning now, will be roused and Mark will become conscious again. This is possible. Can you make him listen to sounds he is used to hearing."

As soon as the doctors left, Mark's mother rushed home, took their tape recorder to the farm and recorded the cries of the animals - the baa-baa of sheep, moo-moo of cows the grunt of pigs and even the bow-vow of dogs.

She took the tape recorder to hospital, kept it by Mark's bed and played it.

The familiar baa-baas, moo-moos and bow-vows seemed to have tickled Mark's brain. He woke from his sleep and look around. That part of the brain that was dormant (sleeping) had woken and Mark became conscious.

Said his mother, "It was like putting a little oil into a lock and would not work." She was delighted. The familiar sounds had loosened that part of Mark's brain that had become tight.

It took two to three months for Mark to come back to his normal self.

"The animals on the farm saved my life," said Mark, his heart full of gratitude. "As the doctors had said familiar sounds made my brain active again."