When 16-year-old Reuben Nsemoh woke up from a three-day coma after being kicked in the head during a soccer game, he woke up more than just a little confused… he was speaking an entirely new language.
An incident happened late last month while Reuben was playing goalie for a Gwinnett County-based national team in Georgia, and when he dived for the ball, another player kicked him in the head. Reuben told WSBTV that he began having seizures shortly after the collision and Reuben’s coach, Bruno Kalonji, said the teen stopped breathing several times.
“I was in shock and panic, then he’d come back and he’d start throwing up. It was a sequence of things I’d never seen before. You thought you’d might lose him. I thought I might lose him there,” Kalonji said.
Reuben was airlifted to Atlanta Medical Center and spent the next several days in a coma. When he finally woke up, his parents say he only spoke Spanish at first, which was a language he’d never spoken fluently before. Reuben says he has a lot of Spanish-speaking friends, but they never speak their native language around Reuben.
Since this was Reuben’s third concussion, it’s believed that traumatic brain injuries can cause short and long-term changes in language, according to TBI researchers with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Luckily, as Reuben recovered, he started to speak English again, and told WSBTV, “Sometimes I feel like I am not there, but I am.”
Reuben one day hopes to play soccer again, but his coach wants him and every other goalie to wear a helmet. “Why not start using it in practice and in the games so, what happened is everybody is waiting for that big thing before they start wearing the mask. We should try to prevent these things from happening earlier,” Kalonji said.
Reuben’s medical bills so far have cost a pretty penny, so his friends set up a GoFundMe page to help raise money.
Can you believe this teen woke up from a concussion speaking Spanish? Do you know anyone who this has happened to?
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[Featured Image Credit: wsbtv.com]
Teen Wakes Up From Three-Day Coma Speaking Fluent Spanish is an article from: LifeDaily