No One Knew

Joanna was a friend of Martin's sister. They met in 2008, over Skype.

"If I ask him anything, he'll give me an honest answer. There's no pretend."
— Joanna, his wife

"It just so quickly turned into love," she said.

In 2009, they married. Martin was 33. He moved to England.

"My face would hurt from smiling so much."
— Martin Pistorius

In December 2018, they welcomed a son, Sebastian.

The boy doctors once called a vegetable became a husband, a father, a web designer and an author.

In 2015, he told his story on stage in a TEDx talk. He called it "How my mind came back to life - and no one knew."

For more than ten years, the world talked around him as if he weren't there.

He was there the whole time.

It took one person looking closely enough to see him.