Scottish Man Recounts How He Woke Up From A Coma And Only Spoke Malay For A Day
He had not spoken Malay in almost 20 years.
By Katrina Khairul Azman — 01 Apr 2019, 12:29 PM
Fraser Watt was 24 years old when he nearly lost his life in a car accident in 1983
The injuries he sustained after colliding with a tractor near St Andrews, Edinburgh, resulted in him losing almost a quarter of his brain, NextShark reported.
Watt was in a coma after the accident, and spent more than a month intensive care.
When he woke up from the coma, doctors were shocked to find that he was speaking to them in a foreign language.
That language was Malay.
When he was a child, Watt's family lived in Borneo where his father worked as a civil engineer.
At the age of five, he was already fluent in Malay and Chinese.
However, after he returned to Scotland in the 1970s, Watt spent most of his adult life speaking only English.
"Everyone was stunned when I spoke [Malay]", Watt told the crowd at the opening of a new base for Edinburgh Headway, a charity supporting adults who have survived brain injuries
"So was I because, although I was fluent as a child, I hadn't spoken [Malay] for 19 years before the crash," he explained in his speech, according to Edinburgh Evening News.
"My mum was at my bedside so she could translate for the doctors until the end of the day when my English returned," he added.
More than 30 years after the car accident, the 60-year-old still feels painful migraine-like headaches on a daily basis
Watt revealed that his memory is "now permanently scrambled", though every so often an isolated memory resurfaces.
He also shared that the biggest struggle is people assuming he is stupid because they "don't have the patience while I struggle to recall memories or articulate thoughts."
However, he added that, "I've learned how strong I really am and how to survive whatever comes my way", Edinburgh Evening News reported.
