These 13 coma patients experienced a warped sense of time and loss of memory while unconscious, but you might just be surprised by what they did remember after waking up.
“I see pictures my family took of me and…”
“Head trauma. Just a few days in a coma. I don’t remember waking up, I don’t remember sleeping, I don’t even remember anything from the day of the accident except some fragments. It’s a gradual process going from a comatose situation to slowly gaining your senses. I see pictures my family took of me in the week I spent in the ICU and the days I got into the regular recovery rooms. I see myself standing around, looking at the camera, smiling. And I remember none of it. My first long term memory didn’t start to kick in until a full 4 weeks after the accident.”
“The drugs gave me crazy dreams…”
“I was in a medically induced for 2 weeks and I had no perception of time. I was in an accident, put into the coma by doctors, then awoke on a later date. The drugs gave me crazy dreams for the next month in the hospital but I have no memory of anything during the time I was in the coma.”
“My mom talked to me while I was in a coma and…”
“I was in a coma for a week after surgery. To me it was instant. The odd part was that my mom talked to me while I was in the coma and I remember the things she said. She talked about raising me, the funny things I did, etc. When my mom passed away in 2007, she fell asleep first. We knew she wouldn’t wake up again, so I talked to her about how amazing she was as a mom. I talked for hours until she took her last breath. I hope she heard me. I wasn’t always a good son.”
“Felt like 10 minutes of sleep…”
“Was in a coma for 8 days, but it felt like 10 minutes of sleep. No dreaming here.”
“Last thing I remember was getting put onto a helicopter…”
“I was in a coma for four or five days. I woke up two days into it and pulled out my vent and feeding tube and punched a nurse. I don’t remember that at all. Then when I came out again I was in the process of trying to punch a different nurse. Then I realized where I was and calmed down. Last thing I remember was getting put onto a helicopter. Then I woke up. No in between.”
“One second I was inside my friend’s car and the next…”
“One second I’m inside my friend’s car and the next I’m in a hospital bed a few days after. I have no recollection of what happened in between and no dreams. Just in a blink of an eye and I was in the bed.”
“It isn’t any different than…”
“I was in a coma after a big head concussion resulted from a car accident. It’s no different than being asleep, the only difference is that you wake up thirsty like you’ve never been before and for some reason I couldn’t drink any water and I was only allowed to suck a clean wet sponge to ‘calm’ my thirst. I was in a coma for 2 days which isn’t too long but as I said before: it isn’t any different than taking a long nap.”
“Upon waking up I felt like my body was…”
“No recall during, but upon waking I felt like my body was brand new, sort of like a baby might. It was a feeling I had never had before nor will likely again.”
“I had a bit of a flashback-like memory…”
“I had a blood clot in brain at the age of 19 and was in a medical coma for 11 days. There was nothing, no dreams, or anything. I had a bit of a flashback-like memory, of someone trying to put a oxygen mask on my face, saying something like ‘it’s okay, I know you hate it.. Something something – but you need the training.’ No idea if I made that up during the waking up phase or not, but I do remember a burning pain in my lungs associated with it. Then again, I was knocked off my tits on every anesthetic under the moon, and had quite vivid, almost psychotic delusions for several days afterwards. Overall though, no dreams or anything whatsoever associated with the coma itself.”
“My last memory was…”
“I was in an induced coma on life support for 16 days. My last memory of being put to sleep was a nurse coming into my room and saying the anaesthetist was here and they were going to intubate me. Then there was nothing. No sensations whatsoever. I have no memory of being under. Then they decided to wake me up. I don’t remember anything while in the coma. After about 12 days on ECMO my lungs had recovered enough for them to remove it and wake me up. I’m not sure for how long they were reducing the medication but I didn’t wake up quickly. I drifted in and out of consciousness for what my girlfriend said was about 24 hours before I was reasonably awake. I know now that what I was having were dreams and hallucinations, but my god I was LIVING it at the time. These are the dreams. I was at a train station, and I looking for a drug dealer to buy some ice from. I had never bought or used ice in my life, and I didn’t know how to go about getting some. So I was loitering around the station, not doing anything, just looking for signs of someone dealing. I was feeling nervous as hell and I had the feeling that people were noticing me. I started to feel increasingly paranoid and scared. Two police approach me and tell me they know what I’m doing. They point to a car full of people and say ‘those people are going to kill you.’ I ask the police if they can help me and the say no, you brought this on yourself, we can’t do anything. Now I’m really frightened, i’ve never been so scared in my life. I ask the police again if they can help me and they laugh and shake their heads and say no. I wake up slightly at this point but I still feel the overwhelming fear. I see through a haze someone standing over me and feel a huge force push into my chest. I try to scream but can’t speak, then I’m back in a different dream. (Incidentally, I later found out the pressure I felt on my chest was from an echocardiogram) I’m being held in a room at a Hungry Jacks store. The manager is there and he is very angry at me. Apparently I threw a drink on one of the servers. I feel trapped and confused and it’s making me really angry. The room is very hot and uncomfortable. I’m sitting up very high for an unknown reason, well above everyone else. He says the police are on the way, but my mother has talked him into letting me go. Then I skip to fishing. I’m sitting in a boat and a fisheries officer is there with me. I’ve been caught fishing without a license and he’s holding me in the boat. I feel so ashamed of myself. I knew I needed a license but I decided not to get one. He says to me, ‘you really like getting into trouble don’t you.’ I’m now in a pub. It’s the only pub that I can go to because it has a special chair that allows me to drink water. I’m unbelievably hot and thirsty. The chair looks kind of like a dentist’s chair. It allows me to sit back so the barman can put a tube down my oesophagus and give me a drink. I can’t swallow because of the other tube in my throat. I feel so grateful that he is giving me a drink. The water cools my burning hot chest. I feel happy and content, I don’t want to leave the chair. I remember being awake and seeing a christmas tree on fire through a gap in the curtains. I woke up at one stage and saw that the curtain was dirty and thought, I’d better change that, then fell trying to get out of bed. The nurses said my girlfriend will be in at 9:00am. I kept looking at the clock and seeing that it was 9:00, so i’d ring the bell and ask the nurse if my girlfriend was here yet. They would tell me, no, it’s only (insert time). I did this 4 times. The doctor said I had ICU Syndrome.”
“The officer tased me and I…”
“Just blackness honestly, I woke up what seemed to be 5 minutes after I aspirated. I was walking home from a college party when an undercover stopped me. I told him I wasn’t feeling good and wanted to get home to throw up. He decides to arrest me for public drunkenness and since it was at a university I had to be taken to the hospital to get blood drawn due to protocol. I’m strapped into the gurney as I plead that I need to throw up but he didn’t give a f_ck. So when I feel it coming up I tried to get to my side and the officer decided to tase. I aspirated, brain shut down, and was in a coma for about a weekend. I just consider myself lucky to be alive. Every day I do my best to realize I got a second chance.”
“The dreams are so vivid and span such a large amount of time that he thinks…”
“My dad was in and out of a coma for about eighteen months. He had a ‘dream’ of being a Chinese watchmaker in an 18th Century fishing town, which was extremely long and complex. The memories from his ‘dream’ are so vivid and span such a large amount of time that he thinks it was actually him revisiting a past life.”
“He only came to after noticing…”
“One guy I know who was knocked out experienced years and years of life in just a few minutes. He had experienced falling in love, getting married, having kids and seeing them grow up. He only came to after noticing something weird about a lamp. That’s what he told me.”