Like all toddlers, Richard Coman has his good days and his bad days. "If he can sit and play with his toys or go in the car for a ride, you can't have a better child," says Richard's mother, Joan. "But if you want him to do something, he won't. He's a lovely, nice-natured boy, but he does have his moments."
But Richard is not like other children, despite his mother's affectionate habit of referring to him as such. Although he has been ruled to have the mental age of a two-year-old, Richard is 38, and for almost his entire life this 5ft 8in, 12-stone man has relied for his every need on his parents Sidney and Joan, now both in their 70s. "He don't understand, bless 'im," says Joan, a bubbly, youthful woman with a Norfolk burr. "That's just childlike. He don't understand."
Richard Coman's tragedy is that he should, by rights, be an independent adult like any other, with a career, perhaps married with a family of his own. Instead, in a catastrophic error by Norfolk and Norwich hospital in 1964, Joan Coman was not delivered of her otherwise healthy baby until 22 days after her due date, a decision which led to her son being deprived of oxygen at birth and delivered with severe brain damage. They were sent home to the village of Tunstead in Norfolk without a word of apology or explanation; the doctors did not even tell them that anything was wrong.
"When people used to ask, 'What's wrong with him?' we would say that he got damaged at birth. In our own hearts we always knew that was what had happened. No one told us we could complain. Nobody ever told us a thing. But we always wanted to know what had happened."
In January, almost four decades too late, they finally got satisfaction. In a remarkable legal case, Richard was awarded more than £3m in damages for his injuries against East Norfolk Health Authority, which admitted 75% responsibility for the error. It is thought to be the longest delay in a case of medical negligence ever brought in this country. "Richard will be looked after for the rest of his life now," Joan said after the ruling, "and we will be able to enjoy what is left of ours. He is a beautiful boy who has brought much laughter and happiness into our lives, and we will always be there for him."
Joan and Sidney Coman are a quite extraordinary couple; cheerful, pragmatic and warm, and fiercely proud of their son. One gets the impression that they have mined determinedly for every scrap of joy from a lifetime of constant devotion to their son and largely succeeded in finding it. It has been a daunting task all the same. Richard is able to walk and talk, but cannot bath, shave or dress himself and has worn incontinence pads since he was born.
The bare fact that Richard needs minute-by-minute attention conceals what this has actually meant to his parents, who for most of his life have been almost entirely responsible for his care. In 38 years Joan Coman did not have a solitary full night's sleep; they have been on holiday only twice since Richard was born. Were they ever able to head out together for a drink to the local pub? "No! Oh, no. The only time we ever went out for a drink would be if we'd be out for a ride, and pull up outside a pub," says Joan.
"Sidney might want a glass of beer, but he'd bring it out of the pub and we had to sit in the car to drink it. We could never take Richard in, in case he had a fit or was a bit loud."
They arranged their working lives, Sidney as a motor mechanic, Joan "doing odd jobs", around Richard, working furiously to ensure he never went without. (Joan would take Richard with her to work when he was not at school - she believes his lifelong obsession with the colour yellow may have been sparked by being with her on a job picking daffodils.)
"If I was hanging washing outside," says Joan, "I would have to take just one or two bits at a time. You could never take a basket out and say, I'll peg these all out. You'd peg a few wee bits out, and stick your head in, check he's all right, take out another couple of things. I'd have to shout out: 'Richie, mummy's still here,' and he'd go 'Yooo-hooo!'" Did they have any help from agencies or even family? "No, we done it ourselves. We were a team, weren't we?"
Perhaps the most shocking part of the Coman family's story is the lack of basic respect they were shown by many of the health professionals involved in their case, beginning when Joan first went to hospital. "I had a good pregnancy, no problems, but Richard was overdue so they gave me what was called a glorified cocktail - castor oil and orange juice in them days - that's supposed to speed it up."
A week and a half later, having been given almost no information, she finally had a caesarian section. The following day they were advised to have the baby baptised, as he wasn't expected to last the night. It was as Sidney left to brief their families that he overheard a doctor say to a colleague, "Why was Mrs Coman left so long before she was operated on?" When they finally took Richard home, aged 12 days, this was the only scrap of information they had that even hinted that something had gone awry.
"He was the most gorgeous baby, wasn't he?" says Joan. "But he was just very slow. Our friends next door had a boy a fortnight older than Richard; well, he was doing things and Richard was still lying there. People kept saying, that's because he's a caesarian baby, they're lazy, but he still just lay there, he never cried. Then, when he was 23 months, he suddenly got up and ran - there was no crawling. It was as if someone had said to him, you can run. And you couldn't stop him after that."
When Richard was four, Sidney heard of Great Ormond Street children's hospital in London, and insisted to a defensive local doctor that they take their son there for tests. "The [London] doctor said, 'There's nothing I can do for Richard now, but I will put an inquiry into Norfolk and Norwich asking why this happened,'" says Joan. "And he said, and I remember this well: 'If you ever have more children, never, ever push him to one side.'"
She is very aware that her recall of the smallest details of Richard's childhood is flawless. "When we started this case [the solicitor] said, 'You've got a good memory of this, Mrs Coman.' I said, 'Wouldn't you if you had lived with it for 30 years?' Something like that lives with you for the rest of your life."
They would have continued caring for Richard alone, fighting for spaces in special schools and day centres while worrying about their own increasing frailty, had it not been for a newspaper report they chanced upon in 1994, about another man who had also suffered birth injuries and had won damages aged 28. Sidney listened to the radio to catch the name of the law firm involved, and wrote a letter to Simon John, a solicitor at the local firm Cunningham John.
Eligibility to claim for medical negligence normally expires three years after one becomes aware of the injury. The crucial factor in Richard's case was that because he cannot understand his own circumstances, his parents were able still to bring a claim in his name. "When we took this up with Simon we just wanted to know if we were right, that he had been damaged at birth. And it came out, that we hadn't been living a lie. We were right. That happened."
They have, in turn, been inundated with letters from people who have read about Richard's case and wonder if their own injured children might be eligible. "We've had loads of letters," says Joan. "I've had three phone calls this week. We've had about 30 people contacting us, and maybe the same number contacting Cunningham John. I'm pleased if our case helps people, because that's how we found out."
The award has not transformed Richard's life, they say, but it has certainly made a difference to theirs. The family has bought a home more suitable for Richard's needs, with a day room for him and a bedroom for the succession of carers who look after him 24 hours a day. Joan and Sidney live there with Richard but have kept their former home, where they spend a couple of nights a week. "We go away down there for a couple of days. Richard don't mind, but I phone up to see if he's all right. It makes a difference that we're able to get away for a little while. I'm getting some nights' sleep."
"It has made a big difference, but it's hard to let go. I was quite traumatised. To see someone doing what you have done for 37 years. When we sleep up in the other house I'll ring up and shout 'Night, night' to him, he'll shout 'Night!', then in the morning I'll ring up and he'll know it's me, and he'll shout, 'How are you?' and I'll shout, 'Mummy's all right.'
"It doesn't make any difference to Richard, as long as he sees us. But I would never move out. I would never leave him. It would have to be the Lord's thing to do. I couldn't leave him and I won't leave him. We've got to be there for him for as long as we can possibly be."
