I’ve been in a coma and “died”. AMA

[GhostFaen]

9 years ago after I ended up in a medically induced coma (and on ECMO) for around a month. Twice; once when in the coma and once afterwards I coded and they had to bring me back.

Ask me anything.

@GhostFaen I'm so sorry but I laughed out loud at how you worded the killing Putin part & everyone looking at each other! 🤣 I don't mean to play down what you went through but that set a funny scene

I have had a near-death experience recently and it was all very peaceful. I don't think it was the morphine, I've had morphine at home for pain and it had nothing like that effect. I just felt in a dreamless sleep and it was very lovely. A few days afterwards I woke up I thought how difficult it was by comparison to be alive. I am not afraid of dying at all.

@bloodywhitecat I think your husband was reaching out to you. I can only relate it to my own experience which is one of the last things my husband did was give me a kiss even though everyone thought he was in a coma, I said goodbye and he puckered his lips! So you don't know what people know or can hear. It sounds like your husband may have been trying to comfort/reach out to you. I did try to give my husband water but he choked on it so his last words were 'stop'! It's not all romance at the end, but I think that bond is still there.

This is an interesting read! I'm an ICU nurse and some stories I have heard after wakening up patients can be so different.

Well done on your recovery!

Interesting thread. I've always had an interest in these subjects. I found Dolores Cannon very interesting. They resonate with my collective beliefs over the years.
Thank you for sharing.

Thanks for answering my question OP. It sounds like such a terrifying experience, especially the coma dreams. A family member of mine had sepsis and said he had terrifying dreams during that (he wasn't in a coma though).

I guess I’ll never know what caused the dreams. I just assume the levels of drugs that it takes to keep you under must be crazy.

It was hideous at the time, but I dismiss it as a trauma now, and laugh about the dreams for the most part. Some were so traumatic I’ll never tell a living soul as they were “real”, but weren’t, so I don’t know how to explain how they effected me. Others…being captured while saving the beluga whales and being made to kill Putin…any trauma I felt during that is overcome with the hilarity 🤣🤣

Everything is ok to ask, I promise 😅.

The first time I was in the coma so wasn’t aware other than the sudden vacuum which happened DURING a dream. Just suddenly was in this white vacuum with the “God” (again, not religious).

The second time I was very aware. I was awake and “with it”. I woke up not able to catch my breath. They thought it was a panic attack and tried to calm me down with every trick they could think of…even a meditation CD, but I just couldn’t breathe. My sats all looked ok. They brought in a psychiatrist (I know this because he was my dad’s and told him about it later (my parents and husband were all privy to my medical what nots as I wasn’t able and husband gave his consent for my parents)) and he took one look at me and said “it’s not in her head”. It was a wonderful nurse who suggested they tested my blood acidity. My liver had stopped working because I was in heart failure. Because the body likes to keep the heart going I was in multiple organ failure.

I remember drifting in and out of consciousness and then suddenly being surrounded and manhandled. I couldn’t see anything, so assume my eyes were closed, but would have sworn they were open and I was trying to talk to them. I remember them yelling at me to look at them/talk to them which was infuriating as I was trying (I’m sure it wasn’t shouting, but tunnel hearing), then nothing, just blackness. The return was SUDDEN and jarring. I didn’t think I could breathe and wanted to pull the tube out. They tried to calm me. Then they must have sedated me. I woke up in the next hospital, very sore, a day later. There were a few snippets of lights and beeping (dialysis amongst other things).

I wasn’t scared, but was angry 😬. No one was listening to me.

Then I felt horrendous, as I remembered the last words to my mother were “will you just fuck off” after a whole day of being unable to breathe, she told me she’d breathe with me. To think they might have been the last words I’d ever said to her and my step-dad. 😳. I hadn’t complained once in my whole experience and THAT was when I lost it 🤦‍♀️
…she says she thinks she could have laughed about it, in the end 😅

I was in the crazy adventure the whole time that I had thoughts, and it seemed to last three years in my mind. It was so believable despite really, really not, to a rational mind.

I couldn’t write it down in a chronological order though. I couldn’t start to try to figure most of that out.

I hope the above message explains that. There was an order but I find it really hard to put a lot of it back together, and did from day one. Some parts seemed set in stone with timeline, but a lot was fluid and kept repeating (the tests especially so. Them being abnormal it made sense at the time).

This. ^ @GhostFaen You didn't 'die.' 🙄

I think things were definitely swayed by what I heard.
I hope if you’re right about the afterlife that my god is feeling a bit kinder when I finally bite the dust. Maybe she was so “mean” because she knew I should live. I’d love a conversation with her.

Thank you for your input. Again…the quote marks were alluding to facetiousness.

But ultimately, is this the hill you want to die on given the subject matter? (Sorry, “die” on.)

That’s a really interesting question about personality. I can’t give an answer other than morphine is bloody wonderful. I think it was the other drugs and confusion for me.

Looking back it’s hilarious 🤣🤣

How could I genuinely think I’d pushed him off a boat with a wrecking ball type device 🤦‍♀️. Honestly though, I was utterly certain.

My friend had a very similar experience to you OP, it was crazy reading what happened to you! She was in a coma for 3 weeks, and on being brought round was convinced she’d given birth to triplets, was saving the world in New Zealand, had been captured in Italy, was married and many many other strange things. She also spoke about tests to get somewhere else!

Thank you for sharing! Can I ask what the tests were? Were they written tests or tests of strength etc?

STOP IT! That’s so similar it’s scary. I need to talk to your friend 🤣

They were physical tests, like doing a jump puzzle (I failed one of these at a blade part and instead of my leg being cut off the “god” cut my husbands leg off. The rest of every single dream he had lost his leg at the calf”)
Then there were mental tests like being put in an asylum where I was mute and looked like an old woman. I had to get my dad to recognise me, without being able to speak to him.

The majority of the tests were really cruel.

You didn't die. You had a near death experience.

My goodness! How interesting and terrifying all at the same time! Glad you are ok now xx

Ok, thank you. Please stop with this. I’ve explained twice now. Do we not know what a quote mark suggests? You poor thing to have such a blank and white mind to read written text without any inflection. It must make reading books really hard.

I find the pedantry rather funny given the subject matter.

*black and white

I wonder if it’s partly also as they were unbroken by wakeful periods for so long that they became so intense and involved, and so real-feeling? Because I guess for that time that was your ‘reality’ – you weren’t waking up in the morning and having a wakeful period by contrast?

Did you have an awareness at any point that they were dreams of some sort, or some sort of ‘alternate’ reality (with the ‘real’ world also still happening elsewhere?)

What a very interesting thread.

I recall after my late husband's cancer surgery him being in the ICU on heavy doses of morphine. He was definitely hallucinating.
He knew who I was and all but he insisted there was a cat in the room and the litter box needed emptied!

My son was in an induced coma for nearly a week after an auto accident. A month later I'd received the police report and the report was a death report. Needless to say I lost it reading it.

After they removed the breathing tube and brought him out of the coma he said he was thirsty, had a bad headache and sore throat and asked me why he was in the hospital.

He didn't really say much about it as he was just 8 years old and I was super focused on his recovery.

He's mid 30s now!

I had no awareness. As weird and sometimes pure hallucination-y as they were I thought every moment was reality. It’s unlike any dream I’ve ever had. I would have sworn blind that’s what happened. The real world seemed to meld in a little bit as there was a lot that was “hospital/institution” based and I definitely heard my family.