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When music-mad Dominic
Lilley slipped into a coma after suffering a freak heart attack at the age
of 20, his parents never gave up hope. They spent hours talking to
the young Birmingham guitarist as he lay in a coma for nearly a
month. In the end it was not their soothing words that brought him
around… but the thrashing guitars of punk band The Clash.
 Friends
The strains of London’s
Burning and White Riot echoed around the ward along with hits from
1980’s rockers The Jam. Gradually the musician and sound engineer,
from Barrows Lane, Yardley, recovered and is now on the slow road to
recovery.
His parents Tony and
Sandra Lilley even played Louis Armstrong to their lad as he lay in bed at
City Hospital, in Dudley Road.
Dominic, former bass
guitarist for local bands Helicon and Alchemy, is now much better but has
been left wheelchair bound, with limited use of his legs and hands.
Tony, a business analyst,
and his supply teacher wife, who have three other daughters, have high
hopes Dominic will play the guitar again with constant rehabilitation at
Moseley Hall Hospital.
“At first, the
diagnosis was very bleak and I worried that Dominic would never pull
through,” said Tony. “He is getting better all the time and in a
year’s time he may be able to play the guitar again.
“Dominic really loves
music and would always listen to my old tracks from the 60s.
So we played some of those songs and particularly The Clash and The
Jam to him when he was in a coma. It
seemed to work.
“It will take months if
not years to get the new Dominic back, but at least he is alive.
Most young people who suddenly have a heart attack for no reason
die.”
Concert
Dominic, who attended
Cockshut Hill School, in Yardley, was relaxing with friends after the
People’s Festival, in Walsall, in July last year when he suffered a
heart attack – despite being a fit young man previously.
Local
bands hosted a concert in honour of Dominic at Bar Academy in April and
raised £2,800 for City Hospital and heart charity Cardiac Risk in the
Young.
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