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  "Someone in a car accident yesterday can get therapy, but Terry was out of commission for 19 years, and yet, he's judged by the same criteria. If he's not improving fast enough, he gets the boot," said Drew Nederpelt, a spokesman for the Wallis family.

For a long time, Wallis' parents insisted he was responsive while doctors said he could never recover. At times, he would grunt at Chevy commercials, perhaps because he is a Ford man, but no one could know for sure that Wallis was trying to communicate.

Dr. Joseph Fins, chief of medical ethics at New York-Weill Cornell Medical Center, has studied Wallis' recovery. He has asked Rep. Marion Berry, D-Ark., to sponsor a bill that would lead to clearer diagnoses of brain-damage cases and direct aid to patients' families.

Fins borrowed the name "Terry's Law" from the controversial "Terri's Law" in Florida that gave the governor authority in 2003 to order the feeding tube reinserted in Terri Schiavo during the lengthy court battle between her husband and her parents.

"Terry's Law would not interpose the state into private matters like the withdrawal of unwanted medical interventions," Fins' letter to Berry said. "Instead, it would propose a new framework of medical benefits for families touched by brain injury."

Berry, who is one of 68 members of the Congressional Brain Injury Task Force, responded cautiously to the letter. He says insurance coverage should give Wallis and other brain-damaged patients more time to heal, but legislation may not be the best course of action.

Nederpelt, the family spokesman, says Medicaid pays for a couple hours of therapy a month but Wallis isn't improving fast enough to qualify for a full therapy regimen that his family says would aid him.

Wallis isn't alone among patients recently emerged from a long-term stupor. Buffalo, N.Y., firefighter Donald Herbert reacted April 30 to a change in his medication by suddenly talking with his wife and children after 9 1/2 years of sitting silently in his wheelchair. Tracy Gaskill of Arkansas City, Kan., also spoke in April for the first time in 2 1/2 years.

Complicating each story is the distinction between various states of consciousness. What Wallis experienced, "minimal consciousness," wasn't in medical literature until recently. Brain injuries can be misdiagnosed because the definitions are so new.

"They're not widely known and not widely used and there's a lot of confusion among doctors who label it one thing without knowing the definitions," said Dr. David Ripley, a brain injury rehabilitation physician at Craig Hospital in Englewood, Colo. "And therein lies the rub."

The federal Traumatic Brain Injury acts of 1996 and 2000 directed the National Institutes of Health to conduct more research, but Fins complains they remain underfunded. There are 1.4 million traumatic brain injuries a year in the United States., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. All but 350,000 are less severe, such as concussions.

"Compare that with breast cancer or AIDS research, and TBI is kind of an orphan diagnosis," Ripley said. "It's tremendously difficult to do research because no two brain injuries are exactly alike and people vary in their recovery."

Fins said as many as 300,000 people could benefit if more were understood.

"Think about the situation these people are in, lingering in nursing homes, with a partial sense of who they are, not knowing whether they're man or boy, old or young," Fins said. "This should be heart-wrenching to people."

Terry Wallis struggles to speak without drooling and doesn't believe his family when they tell him he was in a car accident in 1984 that injured his brain, but he has progressed since making contact on June 11, 2003. He reaches a withered hand a few inches to greet people. His legs are getting stronger. He startled everyone last year by remembering his Social Security number, and the former amateur mechanic can still recite the spark plug firing order of an old Ford.

The cases of Wallis and Schiavo are different biologically. Both slipped into comas when their brains were first injured, but then they diverged. Schiavo remained vegetative while Wallis moved into a state of limbo.

Wallis' limbo was a "platform for additional recovery" and begs for further study, Fins said.

"Because of the interest Schiavo engendered, people are more attentive to consciousness," Fins said. "But Terry Wallis deserves equal attention because his case offers hope."

© 2005 The Associated Press

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