Coma Survivors Share Their Unbelievable Experiences

October 30, 2019 | Phillip Hamilton

Coma Survivors Share Their Unbelievable Experiences


Most of us will never experience a coma, and we should be thankful for that. We should also be thankful for the bravery of these Redditors who took to the site to share their tales of surviving and experiencing comas. Biggest takeaway: It’s nothing like the soap-operas make it out to be. Here are 42 stories of people who survived comas.


1. Temporary Insanity

I was in a medically induced coma for a week or so back in 2008, after going through a 22-hour surgery to remove the tumor from my abdominal area. I ended up spending about three months in the surgical ICU recovering from that, before being sent upstairs for three MORE months in the hospital receiving chemotherapy. I still have PTSD today from my time in the ICU.

A big part of it was something called ICU Delirium. Basically, it's when the bright (always on) lights, constant beeps and odd combinations of medicines mess with your systems and basically make you temporarily crazy. I still remember the hallucinations I had there more vividly than dreams I had THIS WEEK. Ugh.

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2. Pete Repeat

I was in a coma for about two weeks following a cardiac arrest as a teen. I was technically dead for over an hour, in fact. People often ask me if I could hear my family talking to me or if I was dreaming. The answer is, "No." There is a huge hole in my memory beginning about two weeks before the coma through a week after "waking up."

And waking up is in quotes because I would wake up, ask a bunch of semi-incoherent questions, fall back under, then wake up again and ask the exact same questions, in the exact same order. Repeat six or seven times. The coma was not even blackness. It just does not exist. I remember having the hardest time believing it was actually mid-October when the last day I remembered was late-September.

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3. The Come Up

I was in a medically induced coma for three weeks. All I remember is what it’s like when they start pulling you out. I was having very vivid and strange dreams mixed with reality, then one day I was able to recognize it was now September. I remembered entering the hospital in August.

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4. Mystery Shooter

My sister was in a coma for over a month from a car accident. She was asleep in the backseat on a road trip and her friend flipped the car on the freeway (trying to avoid something on the road by swerving, but in a panic she hit the gas instead of the brake). She had a bruise on her brain which was kinda like her being mentally handicapped, but each day she got better.

Now she’s completely recovered and back to normal. When she woke up she told us she had a dream where some mystery guy shot her and that’s what she thought happened with no recollection of the car accident.

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5. The Harsh Sea

I talked to a patient who had been in a medically-induced coma a few weeks before he regained consciousness. He was a homeless man/burn victim. He said his memory was of spending that time on a boat, locked in the hold while the waves tossed and turned underneath him. He said he felt like he could hear what was going on in the hospital around him as the days passed, but that no one could reach him or spoke to him.

He didn’t understand where he was or what had happened. He said it was the worst experience of his life.

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6. Infinite Escalators

Had a major open-heart surgery, almost died, and went into a two-week coma after resuscitation. Being in the coma felt like sleeping soundly, to be honest, and I had an endless series of random dreams. The last dream I had before waking up was that I was riding escalators for way too long, so long that I even thought to myself in the dream, "That's strange, why aren't I waking up?"

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7. Freezing

An ex-girlfriend of mine was in a car crash and was in a coma for a really long time. We went up to say goodbye because her parents chose to turn off her life support. They didn’t and she lived, woke up, and somehow had an American accent (I'm from New Zealand). I spent a night with her after it all settled down, and she was telling me some stuff.

She said that she was in a forest, just walking for ages, and she could see people in a kinda fog but they would always just be out of reach. She also said she heard us all when we visited her in hospital, and again, she just couldn't reach us. She told me that after the accident she has never been able to make herself warm, and the night we had together she was shivering the whole time (it was the middle of summer).

Anyway, it all unfortunately got a bit weird as her brain damage began to really affect her and she started imagining she was dating a celebrity and waiting outside her house at night for him to pick her up and messaging me weird stuff so I chatted to her parents and we decided it was best for me to remove myself from her life. Pretty sad.

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8. Waking Up in Traction

I was in a coma for three days following a serious cycling accident, medically induced. I woke up with zero recollection of why I was there or what was said while I was out. It is easily the scariest situation I've found myself in, but I can't say I remember it. I woke up to my mom and dad in the hospital with me and my body in traction of some sort and that was way scarier to me.

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9. Whom?

The person I knew in a coma was in it for about three weeks and had no recollection of being in a coma. The doctor was saying his name real loud and he finally woke up one day. The doctor asked him if he was (insert real name). The patient said, "Yes and whom do I have the pleasure of speaking to?"

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10. Thankfully Forgotten

My son was in a medically induced coma for 11 days following an accident. He remembers nothing of those 12 days, and the two weeks following are still hazy after four years. He was struck by a speeding car while skateboarding, he suffered a severe traumatic brain injury, jaw broken in four places, molars knocked clean out of their sockets.

Broken clavicle, rib, pelvis. Ruptured spleen, carotid arteries nearly ruptured, needed a chest as well as a peg (feeding) tube. I’m grateful he has no recollection of any of this.

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11. A Puller

I had a seizure and was in a medically induced coma for three days when I was 17. To be honest I don’t remember anything. I remember fading in and out of the anesthesia, trying to pull my breathing tube out, and that my hands were restrained to the bed so I couldn’t. When I woke up and was coherent I couldn’t recall anything from actually being in the coma.

They had even moved me to a hospital over 100 miles away. It was really just nothing but black. No dreams, no lights, no voices, just nothing.

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12. Rebuilding

Dunno. I was in a coma for 11 days, severe brain injury. I don’t remember being in a coma or waking up from a coma. I lost several years of memories prior to the coma, and my brain didn’t really start to “retain” information again until ~six weeks after I came out of the coma. I’m told that my personality changed afterwards. I had to rebuild most areas of my life. It sucked, but it was probably a good thing.

Although I’d be lying if I said I never wondered what my life would be like if I’d never had the coma.

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13. Dreams Aplenty

I was in a coma for two and a half months. Strange dreams that don't make sense now. One was I thought my mother was a robot. Another was I thought there were several groups fighting over who would get me. One was my family, another was a religious group, and another was a male nurse. Weird, I know. I also dreamed that under my bed, there was a space down there, sorta like a place where people can pull a car in and the mechanics are able to walk under the car.

When I started waking up, the nurse would ask me my name, and I thought I was telling her my name…but she looks at my mother and says I wasn't awake yet. After a few weeks, I was fully awake, but they would not let me drink water. I had to drink some kind of thickened water, and it was terrible. They finally let me go.

Also, if you ever see a movie about someone being in a coma for years, and they wake up, and the SAME day they somehow get out of bed and go somewhere...that is TOTAL bull crap. I was only out for two and a half months and it took me a couple of days to just to be able to sit on the side of the bed. ALL strength was gone.

It did come back eventually, but you have to work on it...and it’s harder to rebuild it than it was before you had the coma.

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14. Big Changes

When I was a kid, my best friend got hit by a car at age 12. She was in a coma for I think a little over a year. She said she felt like she was asleep but was most freaked out when she woke up and saw that she had gone through puberty while in the coma.

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15. Another Reason to Avoid Jellyfish

Been in a coma from a serious jellyfish sting during childhood (thankfully not a lethal kind, but still serious enough to destroy my skin and put me in a coma). Never had a dream. Just felt like I woke up from a long sleep, with the last memory I have of collapsing near a changing station at the beach.

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16. Aliens Confirmed

My husband was in a coma for a few months. He said he didn't see a light or dead loved ones, he saw aliens! How scary is that?!

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17. Retention Issues

My girlfriend of six years and sort of fiancé was in a severe car crash when she was 16. Both of her best friends died instantly. She was the only survivor but they didn't think she would make it. She was in a coma for nine months. She was in what is called a waking coma. She retained normal periods of sleep and open-eyed wakefulness, but no higher brain functions.

Here are some things about her experience. She doesn't have any memories of the year prior or the year and a halfish after her coma, and obviously no memories of the car crash. She suffered a traumatic brain injury and when she first got out of the coma she would get naked and sexual with people and anger very easily. These are common problems of people who suffer a TBI.

She went back to school after the coma, but her brain was still healing a lot. She was held back another year because her brain was still not retaining anything. Today she is a wonderful, bright 30-year-old with a college degree. She has a slight speech impediment, gets frustrated easier than most, and it took her a while to get driving down.

Honestly, she still scares the heck out of me when she drives, but there are worse drivers out there.

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18. Trapped

My husband was in an induced coma following a motorcycle accident. He said the only memories he has are of the accident—it’s like he spent weeks stuck inside that memory. When he woke up, it wasn’t softly or gently. He went from asleep, to sort of awake, to mad and thrashing about the bed. They had his hands and feet tied down so he didn’t hurt himself when we woke up, and I didn’t really understand what they meant until then.

He was angry and scared when he woke up. For him, in his mind, he had just had the accident and was still trapped underneath the car.

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19. Just Like Yesterday

After being in a really bad accident that left one of my good friends (the driver) brain dead, they put me into a chemically induced coma for under a week to prevent brain damage due to swelling. When I first woke up, my memory was much better than it was as it gradually faded in the days to come. I have a journal my mother recorded things in, and I recalled many things I shouldn’t have been able to immediately after waking up.

Today, I have very little memory of it all, but I can definitely say that having positive people around you definitely helps when you’re in a situation like that. If you have a friend in this situation, don’t disregard them. Even though your life has moved on, they may wake up one day, and in their mind, not a day has passed since the last conversation they had with you.

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20. Soaring Above the Clouds

Been in a coma twice. First time was four to five days, last time was two days maybe. It’s very similar to when they put you under anesthesia. You have your last memories and then things go black. You might hear some sounds around you and be aware of what is happening but you can't see and you don't really feel anything. For me both times it lasted for maybe five minutes of not being able to open my eyes, but I could hear things...

I would describe that time of being completely out as a dark void, there is nothing at all and you can't even tell time has passed. As I began to wake out of a coma, both times, you kinda regain a bit of consciousness and then, for me, you dream. It's kinda like a very deep sleep, you feel nothing, no pain, you have no awareness of you, if you open your eyes or try to talk you typically don't remember.

But that probably depends on how you got in a coma in the first place. Mine were ODs so I didn't feel pain for the most part; I wasn't suffering from physical injuries (i.e. broken bones, burns, etc.). The dreaming was very surreal and vivid...I remember the first coma dream but not the last one. In the first one, I dreamed I was above the clouds and was basically flying. It felt so real and peaceful, so much so the first thing I asked when I awoke and was able to talk was if I died.

I thought I was in heaven. But as far as I know, I never stopped breathing, so I’m guessing not.

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21. Just In Case

I'm not sure where I read it, but a girl talked about her experience and she mentioned that it was like going in and out of sleeping/dreaming. Just when she would feel like she was waking up, she could hear parts of conversations or the TV, but she would slip right back to "sleeping." She also said when people would clean her she could feel them touch sensitive parts of her like her armpit and butt area.

I'm an inpatient phlebotomist and even though some of my patients are sedated I still always introduce myself and say I'm here to draw some blood, just in case they could hear me.

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22. Glad You’re With Us

I woke up after four days from a suicide attempt. I was still at home and found out I hadn’t been taken to the hospital. There were several people looking down at me when I woke up and I was confused as heck because I thought I had overdosed enough (I’d actually googled lethal doses and stuff beforehand) to never wake up.

I was just wondering if the afterlife looks like my room and angels/god look like my relatives because my aunt, uncle, and second cousin were looking at me. Then I realized I wasn’t dead.

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23. Rude Awakening

I was out for two and a half days from an unintentional overdose (AKA why the pharmacy always asks if you have any questions about that pill nowadays). I have no memory for about a day after waking up but my family said I had some pretty rough things to say after my eyes opened. 0/10, would not recommend.

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24. Another Dimension

I had a road traffic accident. I fell into a coma and dreamed that I woke up 30 years in the past. It was a hyper-realistic constructed reality. I had a job (my actual job but with much less technology) and there were complex, three-dimensional people who became my friends. I didn't know what had happened, but it honestly felt like I'd landed on a different planet.

All the way through the experience, I felt that if I could only work out the reason I was there, I'd be able to get home. In the end, I woke up. Honestly, the world has felt comparatively colorless since. In a messed up way, I want to go back. I miss my friends from the past, and my life doesn't feel as fulfilling in the present day as it did back then.

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25. Lesson Not Learned

I woke up in the hospital three days after an unintentional overdose of opiates and benzos. I remember projectile vomiting in my apartment then waking up three days later with my girlfriend by my side. She showed up to find me unresponsive and barely breathing on my couch. As far as the coma itself goes it was basically like falling asleep and waking up three days later.

It was initially very confusing. I unfortunately didn’t stop using drugs for another year and a half.

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26. Sisterly Love

I was put in an induced coma when I was nine years old after a pretty bad car accident which left me with a fractured skull. All I remember is a bad dream about having a bad headache, and hearing my older sister telling everyone, including my parents, to get the heck out of her way because she wanted to see me. I found out later that this was on the night it happened, and they were trying to calm her down before she saw me.

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27. Chilling Experience

I was in a drug-induced coma for eight days. I don't remember any dreams, but I woke up late at night with my dad sitting next to me in a hospital bed. I had no clue why I was there, but when he asked if I remembered what had happened, I guessed that I'd just woken up from a grand mal seizure, which I'd had a few of before then.

There's a certain weird blankness when you wake up from those, almost like you've gotten a good night's sleep after a tiring journey. My dad told me no, that I'd been in a major accident and had had surgery to put the back of my skull back together. I couldn't remember anything about that, and it wasn't until I reached back to feel the back of my head and ran my fingers over the thick bandages on my half-shaved head that I really believed him.

It was an awfully surreal moment, to say the least. Over time, there have been some things I have remembered that I didn't at the time, but most pertinent to this post was the only memory I have during the coma, which was that of being terribly cold. I never opened my eyes, but I sort of woke up freezing as I lay shivering on a bed. I say sort of, because my senses were dulled, it seemed.

I wasn't really aware of anything other than that I was cold and that there was nothing I could do about it. My extremities were absolutely chilled, and there was nothing close to me that I could use for warmth, so I slowly curled into a ball and tried my best to focus on the warmth of my stomach, tried to let it radiate to whatever else it could reach.

To this day it's still the coldest I can ever remember being. I learned later that I was intubated (I couldn't breathe on my own at that point), but I had developed pneumonia as a result of the extended intubation. The doctors choose to put me on a cold bed to lower my body temperature to combat the illness. Outside of that, the rest of my time in the coma was blank to my memory.

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28. A Father’s Love

About three years ago I overdosed on sleeping pills and it caused me to go into a coma. I remember a lot of what my family said but one thing stood out: my dad's voice. I remember him saying, “I love you and I know you miss your mom and brother but I still need you.” I was in that darn coma for a month and I woke up five minutes after he said that.

I couldn’t speak because I had tubes down my throat and I was nonverbal for a while after because the pills messed up my brain. I don’t know how I remembered but I remembered the slang sign for I love you. I still struggle with suicide but any time I think about it I remember what my dad said, and I try to do the opposite of what I was going to do.

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29. Under the Bed

Ooh I can answer this one! I was in a medically induced coma for two weeks, about three months ago. I had open heart surgery, it didn't go well, had trouble coming off the ventilator so they just put me in a come to try to give me time to heal. I had nightmares the entire time from the medicine they were using to knock me out.

I thought I had been kidnapped by a nurse and was a victim of sex trafficking. I thought my drug addict aunt had her friends rob my sister and her husband, killing my brother-in-law and one of their children, and I thought I was constantly being grabbed by people under my bed. It was not fun. I can't say that I knew I was in a coma or anything. I am usually one of those people that when I have a bad dream, I can tell myself it is just a dream and wake myself up in order to end it.

This was not like that. I was convinced it was all really happening.

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30. Oprah Cured Cancer

It was bizarre. The last thing I remember was the respiratory tech came into my general floor hospital room to give me a treatment. Next thing I know she is calling in the floor nurses saying we have to get her to ICU now. Someone said we need doctors’ orders and the tech said, “I don’t care, we are going now.” Seven days later the breathing tube is removed and I start coming to reality.

The first day I was so out of it I thought Oprah had found a cure for cancer. I also for some reason decided to attack a nurse, tried to run, and promptly fell face-first into a counter. I broke my nose. The weeks following were very strange. I developed a fear of falling asleep and had mild hallucinations. All in all 0/10 recommend.

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31. Kaleidoscope Eyes

I was in a coma for three days after an emergency C-Section (thanks eclampsia). They actually lost me for a couple of minutes after they delivered my twin boys. I remember hearing the sound of my dad crying close by. I could hear people talking around me, but any time I would try to focus on what I thought I was seeing it was like looking in a kaleidoscope.

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32. ?/10, Don’t Recommend

I don't remember the coma itself. I was conscious and then I woke up with my mom sitting next to me, nothing in between. When I woke up, I assumed I was at home. Why would my mom be sitting next to my bed? Wait, this isn't my bed...Wait, is this a hospital room? When did I get to the hospital? Why am I in a hospital? Why am I in pain? I was pretty much panicking here.

Eventually, everything was explained to me and I calmed down. I had rolled my truck and hit my head nine days prior. So, coma itself was ?/10, waking up after was pi/10, would not recommend.

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33. Worst Part? No Chocolate

I was about seven when it happened. I was playing around on a swing and apparently fell over and hit my head (also “swallowed my tongue” in the process). Fortunately, people around were quick to react, somebody reached down my throat and took out my tongue and called an ambulance. I don’t really remember it all, I just remember waking up at the hospital the next day.

My mother was standing next to me and as I woke up she started asking me questions like about what my name was or what her name was. I remember being really confused, I was like, “Mum, what sort of silly question is that?” Turns out, I’d woken up at some point in the ambulance and had no idea who my mum and dad were, as they were in the ambulance with me.

Definitely not a fun experience, but the worst part was that the doctors said I couldn’t eat chocolate for like a month after that.

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34. Introductions

I was in a medically induced coma for several weeks. I had vivid "dreams" of people coming in and introducing themselves but for some reason, they were saying horrible things to me. I could not see anyone, I just heard their voices. It was terrifying because I couldn't respond or scream. I was probably vaguely aware of all the medical personnel coming in but was confused and frightened and it exaggerated everything I was feeling.

I was on a ventilator and it was awful. I felt like it was suffocating me rather than breathing for me and every time they had to suction it I really thought the voices were trying to kill me. When I woke up I was still extremely paranoid and I thought they were keeping me from my family. Everything around me (light fixtures, faucets, medical equipment, etc.) looked nightmarish with leering faces.

It's a side effect of the heavy-duty drugs they had me on but it took a long time for the fear to wear off after I woke up. For weeks afterward, every time someone left after visiting, I was in tears, just absolutely convinced they would crash or something on the way home. I needed constant reassurance that everyone in my family was okay.

I had no conception of the time that had passed and thought I had only been unconscious for a few hours. I was shocked when I found out how long I was out. I managed to extubate myself at one point and because of that was oxygen-deprived for a bit longer than was safe. As a result of that and just atrophy, I couldn't do the most basic things.

I forgot how to turn over, how to pick something up. The clock in my room was a complete mystery, I had no idea how to tell time. Anything with dials or turn switches completely baffled me for a long time, I just could not grasp the concept. Eventually, with lots of physical and occupational therapy, it all came back, although I still talk myself through a lot of processes, maybe just out of habit now.

I'm pretty lucky that there are only minor remnants, such as getting the hiccups constantly (they say it's from a damaged nerve) and for some reason I still put my clothes on backward a lot lol.

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35. The Restaurant Biz

I was in a coma for three days. Unlike most people, I definitely knew time was passing, but didn't know I was in a coma. I kept having weird hallucinations about running a restaurant with my brother, and I kept getting confused and wondering where I was and why I wasn’t managing the restaurant. I’ve never worked at a restaurant and I’m not sure why my brother was involved.

Life didn’t feel real for a few months following waking up.

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36. Five Weeks of Nothing

I remember what put me in a coma, then I remember being unconscious but hearing my parents, hallucinations; and then nothing for five weeks. My next memory is at home and my doctor visiting me.

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37. Tell Them What Happened

A friend of mine was in a six-month coma after an accident. Afterward, he made sure to tell everyone around him to talk to people in a coma because they can hear you. BUT he noted that they should always tell the person in a coma what happened, where they are and what's happening to them because he said that his moments of lucidity were mixed with some truly horrifying dreams and he had trouble distinguishing between what was real and what were dreams.

He said he just wanted to be told what was real and what was happening.

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38. Endless Doors

My father recently survived a cardiac arrest. He was in a coma for almost a week. When he was strong enough to talk, we asked him what he remembers. He said he remembers being wheeled constantly to different parts of the hospital, endless doors, constantly being wheeled in. Most likely it’s a recurring scene of him in the ER as docs were trying to revive him.

He was completely out for around three or four days and would wake up sporadically for the remainder of the week until he was finally released from ICU. We asked him if he saw any door or white light, tunnel stuff...he said nope, just doctors bustling around him.

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39. Coma Mix-Tape

I was in a coma for two weeks after getting toxic shock from a back surgery that I had. I was admitted to a step-down unit because they didn't know what was really going on with me. By the afternoon, I was confused and having trouble breathing. They transferred me to the ICU. As soon as I went through the ICU doors, I coded. The last thing I heard the doctor say was, "Crap!" I woke up two weeks later.

I didn't see a light when I coded. However, I did have a "dream" that I was taken to a cavernous room that was very dark. On one huge wall was a picture of a puzzle that had pieces missing. A voice was talking to me about the puzzle. It told me that the puzzle was the story of my life and that there were still pieces missing. My puzzle wasn't complete so I had to go back.

The voice told me that when I went back, I needed to remember what had happened there and I needed to tell people. It was a very comforting feeling. When they were transporting me to ICU, my mother was in the elevator with me. She had been dead for almost four years by then. I saw her one other time while I was in the ICU and it was when I was having a hypertensive crisis.

The worst part of it all for me was when I was extubated (when they removed the breathing tube). You have to be awake. It's like trying to breathe through a straw. It's absolutely horrible. Also, my husband made a CD for me (this was in 2004) which they played while I was in my coma. A few years later, I found this CD in a drawer and didn't know what was on it, so I played it.

As soon as the music started, I started bawling. I didn't know why. My husband came to see what was wrong. I told him I didn't know. He then realized what CD it was. He told me he had made it and it was played for me while I was in my coma. I had no idea until then it was made. My sister said every time she came to see me, she would whisper in my ear, "Don't you freaking die!" So I didn't.

I'm sorry it was so long. Thanks for reading if you made it this far.

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40. A New Life

I was out for 45 days, no white light, no tunnel, nothing. Woke up and couldn't remember who I was. For six months, never really fully recovered, so I just started life again. Turns out I'm a completely different person than I was and that is a really good thing. I get memories now and then, they aren't pleasant. A woman came and sat by my bed for six weeks, turns out she was my ex-lover.

I couldn't remember her. Didn't recognize my mother.

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41. PTSD Nightmare

Never been in a coma personally, but my BFF was in one for three months after a motorcycle accident and he told me some weird stuff/had some crazy trauma from it. Endless hallways in a hospital where he was running away from some unidentified shadowy thing. Ran into a room full of crazy surgical instruments and a mad scientist who strapped him down to a bed to experiment on him (He later speculated that it may have been influenced by the straps on the bed he was laying on in real life).

Gargoyles. At least that's what he called them. The little gray ones wanted to hurt him but the big reddish-brown one scared them off. Apparently it wasn't safe either but it ignored him rather than kill him. He would often call me in the middle of the night (I got off work around 2:00 AM and could never sleep right after work) and have me come over to sit with him. At these times his mood could range from normal to bouncing off the walls to crying in terror.

One of these times was not long after he had brought a new puppy home. He called me over because he was afraid to be alone with it. Apparently it reminded him of the red gargoyle. I don’t know if comas cause PTSD but I would fully believe that he had it.

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42. Don’t Ask About Anna

Not me, but my cousin was in one for a month. He woke up, looked around and began to scream like a lunatic. And saying someone’s name. However, after that day of waking up he didn’t remember a single thing. The name he was screaming was “Anna.” And no one there knew who Anna was. The doctors believe it was a deep coma dream.

He spent three weeks after that shaking. He had a lot of issues walking properly and forming more than two sentences without stuttering like crazy. I’m very close with him, and when I ask him about Anna, his mood changes drastically and all he says is, “I don’t wanna talk about it.” Pursuing it further would make him break down crying or make him scream at you.

He’s a lot better now, other than when he’s asked who Anna is.

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43. No Privacy When Your Memory is an Open Door

I was in a coma for two and a half months in 2015 when I was 27, following a serious car accident. When I woke up, I still had a tracheotomy and couldn’t speak. I don’t remember a damn thing from the time I was in a coma, but what blew my mind is when I woke up, my new boyfriend at the time was standing there with my parents.

They were chatting to each other like they knew each other. I am a super private and had made every effort for them to not even know of him, so I found this disturbing. I also had no recollection of the accident for months and for a week or two after waking up I had to be retold where I was and what had happened every time I dozed off and woke up.

I had no idea where I was and I thought I was 23, not 27, over a period of months. I also had a really hard time recognizing faces. Like I would see people I knew that I knew but I couldn’t remember why or their names or anything, they would just look familiar. One time, about a month after I had woken up, my parents took me in my hospital bed for a walk in the courtyard of the hospital.

We passed a large mirror in the lobby and I freaked out. I saw my reflection and I knew it was me because I recognized my parents pushing the bed, but I didn’t recognize my own face. There were no injuries to my face or anything, I just didn’t recognize myself. It also blew my mind that I had gone into the coma in late winter, and there was quite a bit of snow on the ground.

When I woke up it was spring, and there was no snow (I had a large window in my hospital room). The news that shocked me the most was the fact that my parents had gone in and packed up my entire apartment. Like I mentioned, I was super private and the idea that they went in there and boxed up all my stuff and gave up my lease was hard to grasp. Obviously, it made sense, but I was troubled by it all.

Coma Survivors FactsShutterstock

Sources: , , ,


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