Pats Announcer Spent Five Weeks in Coma
New England Patriots radio broadcaster Gil Santos told a Massachusetts newspaper that he spent five weeks in a coma this offseason.
Santos told the MetroWest Daily News that he was in a medically induced coma for five weeks after being diagnosed with double pneumonia in one lung, pneumonia in the other, blood poisoning, and a pulmonary obstruction shortly after the Patriots' Super Bowl loss to the New York Giants.
Santos was in ill health late in the season and it all came to a head while out for breakfast with his wife in Middleboro, Massachusetts where he was taken to an area hospital by ambulance.
“I came out of the men’s room and staggered a little bit so Roberta asked Jack (Spinetto), who runs the diner, to help me out to the car,” Santos said. “On the way out, they decided that I should go to the emergency room and I said, ‘OK. Fine.’
Santos continued, “So an ambulance came, they put me in and we’re doing down (Route) 44 to the emergency room at Morton and I don’t remember getting there. The next thing I remember, I was asking Roberta where I was and what happened. That was five weeks later. I’d had the last rites three times.”
Santos is still learning how to use his arms again and learn how to walk, but he says he will be ready for his final season as Patriots radio broadcaster after being with the team since 1966.


