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People Describe What It's Like Being In A Coma

People Describe What It's Like Being In A Coma

One person who was in a coma for two weeks said their experience was 'not even blackness'

Rebecca Shepherd

Rebecca Shepherd

We all have different ideas of what it's like to be in a coma - some people reckon it's just a great, big sleep leaving you waking up refreshed AF and ready to seize the day (we'll call them fools) while others think that the person in the coma can hear everything going on around them including their own thoughts but are just unable to physically move.

You might never have considered how you think it would be but we bet you're curious now.

Luckily, one Reddit thread has delved into that question (because, well, there's a conversation for every topic there) and people have given first-hand accounts of their experience with comas.

The majority report that it's 'not even blackness', but you wake up with absolutely no recollection.

One explained: "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."

Ellen Page in Flatliners.
Columbia Pictures

Another said: "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."

Someone else added: "It was really just nothing but black. No dreams, no lights, no voices, just nothing."

Most people described medically-induced comas.
PA

Although many say that they have no recollection whatsoever, one person wrote: "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 fuck 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."

Another said: "A few years ago my dad was in a medically induced coma for about two weeks. Everyone thought he was completely unconscious the whole time until he woke up and started mentioning conversations people had around him while he was under, this even surprised the doctors.

"He said that from his perspective it was like he was asleep most the time but he would occasionally 'wake up' and could hear what was going on around him without being able to move or do anything before he would eventually drift back to sleep."

Featured Image Credit: Flatliners/Columbia Pictures

Topics: News, Interesting, Medical, Health