A newlywed wife's decision to not allow doctors to take her comatose husband off life support turned out to be the right one, thankfully, when the husband woke up.
Danielle Josey Davis had been married to husband Matt Davis only seven months when a shattering motorcycle accident in 2010 left him in a coma and on life support.
Doctors in Savannah, Ga., recommended taking him off life support and allowing him to die, since all medical opinion was that he had suffered traumatic brain injury and would never wake up.
Danielle refused, deciding to keep him on life support and fighting to get him into rehab, then finally taking him home to her mother's house and taking over his care.
Her refusal to follow the doctors' advice was validated when Matt defied the odds and woke up.
Matt started following Danielle and her mother with his eyes, then started communicating, Danielle said.
One day, when asked what he wanted to eat, he was able to whisper, "buffalo chicken wrap from Cheddar's" — his favorite food.
Danielle said she and her mother took that as the first evidence that Matt's personality was still intact.
"We all whipped around because we all knew what he said," she said.
After more than two months in another rehabilitation program, Matt was able to leave under his own power, using a walker.
Although Matt has regained much of his long-term memory and his usual sense of humor, one thing he has been unable to remember is dating Danielle or even their wedding, so the two have had to get to know each other all over again.
They had only started dating two months before their wedding.
"I'm sure glad I married her," he says.
Like many newlyweds, they've developed pet names for each other; she calls him "Mattie" and "cake," while he calls her "baby" and "doughnut."
They spend much of their time playing Scrabble and going to yoga classes together, and Matt, who has always enjoyed cars, has recently started driving a stick shift.
