A CRASH survivor who spent more than a year battling a coma is now making progress in a wheelchair and is eating solid foods.
Mathew Taylor, of Spring Cottage Road, Overseal, has been a patient at the King’s Lodge unit at the Royal Derby Hospital – which provides rehabilitation to patients with complex neurological disabilities – since November 2011.
His step-father, Simon Moore, said: “He is doing alright and making quite good conversation. It is all going in the right direction and he is wheeling himself about in his wheelchair and is even being assisted with a walking frame.”
Mathew was flown to the hospital after his family raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for his care overseas and to help him get back to the UK, because he was uninsured.
The teacher was critically injured and suffered severe brain damage in July 2011 after a motorcycle accident in Bali, where he was working.
For the past few months, the former Pingle School pupil has been speaking to his family making a few sentences, since officially awaking from his coma.
His mother, Heather Taylor-Moore also recently said his movement was becoming better, with staff putting down a pressure mat on his mattress which alerts them if he is moving in his bed, as he has been known to swing his legs round and pull himself up on his bed rail.
She added: “Mathew is very determined. He has always been a determined person and is good at understanding about his body because he was a PE teacher.”
Mr Moore added: “We always had faith that he would get better. He is making excellent progress and is feeding himself solid foods and drinking by himself.
“We are taking everyday as it happens but we are elated.”
Mr Taylor’s fiancee, Handayani ‘Anda’ Nurul, returned to Bali late last year after spending three months in the UK.
The originally met Mathew while she was working as a personal assistant for an IT company on the Indonesian island.
The 27-year-old had moved to Bali from her home in Jakarta in search of new experiences.
After a whirlwind romance of just seven months, the pair got engaged.
