Ghost Boy

Book 19 of my 2017 Reading Challenge
read from March 2 - 13

Ghost Boy: the Miraculous Escape of a Misdiagnosed Boy Trapped Inside His Own Body by Martin Pistorius

Summary (via the book jacket)
In January of 1988, Martin Pistorius came home from school complaining of a sore throat. He never went back. Within a year, Martin had degenerated into a mute quadriplegic. By his fourteenth birthday he was a hollow shell, unseeing and unknowing; he spent his days at a care center, sitting blank in front of the television while his family waited for him to die.
And then his mind came up for air.
For an unimaginable ten years, Martin would be completely conscious while trapped inside his unresponsive body, secretly aware of everything happening around him, and utterly powerless to communicate it.
Ghost Boy is Martin's story, as written, - shockingly and triumphantly - by Martin himself. With unflinching candor, Martin describes the chilling details of life as a secretly lucid vegetable - from the perversion of some who believed him to be brain dead, to the grace of those who sought recognition in his eyes.
For an age when prolonged illness and misdiagnoses are too common, Ghost Boy is the hopeful story of a discarded life awakening from passivity to action, despair to hope, captivity to freedom.

My Opinion
This was well-written and captivating.  It was like a horror movie when he was describing the time between when he became aware and when he was able to communicate; that would be a claustrophobic nightmare.

Quote from the Book
"As hands clap my back and congratulations are given, I sit amid the noise and movement and realize that people want to hear the story of the boy who came back from the dead. It amazes them - it amazes me too."