Going into a coma can be a terrifying experience, whether it's intentional or from an accident. But does anybody know what it's actually like? Unfortunately, these people do.
People on Quora and Reddit share what it's like being in a coma. Content has been edited for clarity.
“My Conversations Felt Real”
“I was in a medically induced coma for three days during my cancer treatment. My identical twin brother died around a year prior (also to cancer), and the entire time I was in the coma, I was with him. We were in a large green field with lots of sun and my conversations with him felt real.
Other than that, I didn’t hear any of my family talking to me while I was asleep. It was just like I had gone to bed for three days, and I woke up feeling very tired.
I do wonder whether my interactions with my twin brother were real, or if it was just the pain medication I was given causing them.”
Was The Boss Actually There?
“I had a TBI while I was in my early 20’s. I hit my head on some concrete and was knocked out cold… at least that’s what I thought. I was surrounded by friends who called an ambulance, and while it was on its way they said I got up and asked what the deal was.
They told me I needed to sit down but I told them something along the lines of, ‘I’m fine. I’m walking home.’
To which I took two steps, got really confused, sat down, and puked. I didn’t move till the ambulance got there and took me in. The actual next thing I remember was getting stitched up in the ER and I swore I saw my boss there and asked him what happened. Then, right back out.
I ‘woke up’ two days later in the hospital in recovery from a massive concussion.
But it turns out I had been awake and talking to everyone visiting me in the hospital. There were even pictures of me with people there. Very strange.”
“It Was A Full-On Panic Attack”
“I got in a dirt bike accident during the summer between eighth and ninth grade. I don’t remember much about the day or two before…just kind of flashbacks like a dream. I woke up in the hospital a day or so later. To me, it was like sleeping all of a sudden I woke up. I did have some memory loss though which lasted for a couple of hours.
This memory loss was different from just not remembering the day or so before. I woke up and although I knew my parents and everything, I didn’t remember the previous few years of school (like graduating from grade 8). It was a full-on panic attack.
I thought I was going to have to repeat a couple of grades, and then essentially I was mentally handicapped. Everything did come back…but that hour after waking up still haunts me.”
The Vacation That Didn’t Occur
“My wife was in a coma for about a month. At first, I didn’t bring the kids up because of how she looked. In the third week, her color was closer to normal and there was less ‘stuff’ going on as she was pretty stable compared to the first two weeks.
I had told the kids that while Mom wasn’t responsive, there was a chance could she hear us so they should be as brave as they can and sound as happy as they can. I described to them everything I thought might spook them, from the tubes and wires to things beeping randomly and doctors and nurses coming and going.
They were awesome. Even in the initial shock at seeing her with a ventilator, they were vocally loving, hugged and patted, held her hand, etc. We sat in the room a while and just talked.
At one point, I asked the kids what their favorite vacation was. Instead of our Disney and Universal Studios’ trips they both agreed it was the road trip we took from Vegas down to Arizona…driving all over and seeing all the incredible sights. We talked about rides and amusements in Vegas, then Hoover Dam, the Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert, cave dwellings, the petrified forest, silly road stops, a cheap motel we stayed in Flagstaff…we laughed and cried (just a little). It was as nice as it could be. They kissed her goodbye saying ‘See you soon.’
My wife heard it all. But in a hallucinatory way.
She now has, to this day (near 10 years later), a vivid memory of a second Arizona vacation she went on with us. She even asked me early on after she woke up if we had gone on vacation recently. Her mind went through every detail we talked about, and even added on to it as if it all actually happened and the memories of it are as real as any.”
“Felt LIke A Twilight Zone Episode”
“I was in an induced coma for two weeks after a severe car accident in which I also ‘died’ three times.
My experience was that of a profoundly lucid dream during the entire two-week (induced) coma. In retrospect, my lucid dreaming incorporated aspects of external realities. As an example, they give you ‘breathing treatments’ that amount to inhaling a very obnoxious vapor (to help stave off pneumonia I believe). These manifested as extremely smokey experiences in the (lucid) dream. Another example, part of the theme running through the whole two-week coma experience was that I had to wear a binding around my midsection, or my organs would spill out. This proved to be true once I awoke: in point of fact, they had me wide open from sternum to the groin (not only during the coma but also for the nearly three months in ICU afterward). They couldn’t close me due to extreme swelling from the impact and subsequent double-digit surgeries that followed. So, from my two-week coma experience, at least in an induced coma, one’s mind constructs a very vivid ‘reality’ to keep you occupied. And it apparently incorporates sensory experiences you’re not consciously aware of.
The real fun comes upon waking. To my mind, I had gone to sleep one night (at home) and awoke in ICU, strapped down in a gurney with a big tube down my throat, and told two weeks of my life had passed. I did have a vague recollection of the accident, but it was surreal. The lost time felt like a Twilight Zone episode. But that’s not the best part (tongue in cheek).
The best part is what they call, “ICU Psychosis”. It’s an actual thing and is common. I was told it was brought on by the constant mix of medicine they pipe into you (for quite some time I had four of those IV bag ‘trees’ completely covered with IV bags), and being in the same room day in and day out, with no indication of night or day. One literally experiences extremely vivid hallucinations, with no way to discern reality from hallucination. And it goes on for a good while, even though you’ve been told about it. After a time, when I started to be able to think again, I had to give myself a reasonableness test before I spoke.
For quite some time, it was hallucination after hallucination, all every bit as real as external ‘reality.’ It rocked my whole paradigm. Before this, I was a ‘believe it if I see it’ kind of guy. But, now, I view ‘reality’ as more suspect– even though I’m a few years distanced from the ICU Psychosis.”
A Never Ending Loop
“After a major operation, my body couldn’t handle the stress and I slipped into a coma.
It was nice at first. All these beautiful repressed memories that the brain was showing me in the first person, but I found out I can switch to the third person on my will. So I got up and started roaming the memories which began in chronological order from my birth.
So in the third person, I saw my own birth, my first day at school, my first spoken word, things which I normally didn’t remember. Everything was okay at first but then the order of the events reached my accident (because of which I had to undergo a major surgery), the brain went into an infinite loop. It started showing me what happened during those exact two seconds when I took the impact of the vehicle on me. Although at that time I had a blackout, the brain and eyes were recording it seems. And it didn’t just show me what was happening, it started generating the exact amount of pain I felt when I was hit by the vehicle, over and over, again and again, times infinity.
The third person me screamed at the first person me to stop, but the first person me didn’t listen. I don’t know how many times I was hit by the vehicle in the dream and how many times I felt the pain. Eventually, I got tired from fighting all the battles with my own brain and got tired of being hit by the vehicle and just accepted my fate, because everything was so painful.
I decided this time when the vehicle hits me, I would fall down and never get back up (as the brain was making me get back up) and would sleep. And I succeeded in falling asleep. What saved me was a dream of ‘falling’ that I had in the third person, which had enough strength to shake the first person up which stopped the infinite loop and woke up the actual me in the hospital bed.”
“How Would You Know About That?”
“When I was in a coma for three days, I experienced some things which are very disturbing. Beginning with the Lifeline Helicopter ride, I remember seeing things that an unconscious person in a coma should not be able to see.
I remember the Lifeline, being loaded up and I remember seeing a nurse pushing needles into my arm. I had no idea how I got to the hospital when I came to, but within minutes I made the quip ‘this will be the last helicopter ride I ever get to be on”. The police officer who was there to inform me of my arrested status asked me [how I knew I had been in a helicopter].
I remember the flashes of light that kept blinding me. I think it was the doctor or nurses using their penlight on my eyes, to gauge reaction. I remember them cutting off my clothes and placing me into one of the clown gowns. I saw this as if I was watching it from some distance. I remember the police officer that saved my life crying next to my bed. When I asked him about it, he literally jumped.
‘How would you know about that?’
I remember seeing a graveyard, in the very small vale between two sheer canyon walls. The graveyard was vivid, and all of the tombstones were askew, the canyon wall was carved with images of angels and demons. I recall being offered a choice. I don’t remember making one, but looking back now I think that was one of the choices.
I flew. I had no weight, no inertia, no worry. I could go anywhere I wanted to, do anything I wanted to. The one thing I remember wanting the most was to go home and hug my son.”
The Hospital Was A Nightmare
“I was in a coma for 60 days after my lungs failed and my heart stopped for three minutes. As a result, I was revived put on life support. It felt like nothing, I had no thoughts, dreams, or sensation of hearing or touch. I wasn’t aware it even happened. It was kinda like time travel for me as I also had memory loss likely due to the pain medication they give you during a medical crash and the trauma. The last thing I remembered was having trouble breathing, then I woke two months later.
When I woke, I was groggy like the fog wearing off from a sedation surgery. I didn’t know what happened so I asked. My mom calmly told me everything and told me how long I was out.
I literally thought and said ‘What the heck?’
I then realized I had a trach and was thirsty as heck. The doctors thought I may never eat or talk or have a quality of life. They were wrong on all counts. There are challenges and it’s a lifestyle change but overall I’m good. I was already disabled and on Dialysis before the Vent so I’m used to hardship. Luckily I have a supportive family to help me.
And the hospital tried to force my parents to unplug me and let me die after my code. The hospital even got their board involved and my parents still said no. They knew I wanted to fight and live. The hospital was a real nightmare to my parents.”
“The Rest Was A Lucid Dream”
“I was in an induced coma for two weeks following a heart transplant in March 2015.
In the first few days, there was nothing, which I think would have been the effect of the deep anesthetic used in the operation. The rest was like a lucid dream, mixing up what my brain knew beforehand and the experiences my body was having.
For example, I clearly remember going on a train ride, a boat ride, and a ride in a mine cart. This presumably was when my bed was being moved. I have a memory of going to futuristic restaurants and ordering from beeping machines and eating the food through long straws. This was probably from being intubated, and hearing all the machines in ICU.
As I was slowly, over days, revived from the coma the dreams became closer to what was happening. For example, when my grandmother visited me, I actually thought that the Queen had come to visit. I also remember spending a night in the Australian outback desert around a campfire with Indigenous Australians. But in reality, I was being looked after by an Indigenous nurse, was dehydrated as I was undergoing constant dialysis, being kept warm by multiple blankets, and the red glow on the ‘campfire’ was just a machine light.
I also had just finished watching a Walking Dead episode about six hours before I had the operation, they don’t wait around for heart transplant operations, and this also influenced my coma dreams. Fortunately no zombies though, I went on an imaginary behind the scenes tour at AMC (Maker of The Walking Dead) and met Steven Yeun (Glenn), Norman Reedus (Darryl), and Andrew Lincoln (Rick).
So all in all, I had a fun time in my two-week-long coma.”
She Confirmed It Happened
“My dad was in a coma for about a week after riding his bike headfirst into a telephone pole. He says that he remembers the accident itself, followed by an out-of-body experience. He remembers flying high above the scene of the accident and looking down at his body lying there lifeless. He remembers seeing a woman from the neighborhood rushing over to see what happened and other neighbors brought out a flat beach chair to put him on while waiting for the ambulance.
After he woke up from the coma, he immediately broke down crying as the influx of stimulation and confusion poured in. His brain was stuck about five or six years in the past. He remembered his phone number and address, but from years ago and he couldn’t remember the current info. It took about two weeks after coming to for his brain to catch back up to the current day.
The spookiest part? He went to the house of the woman who he had seen first from ‘above’ and asked if she had been the first to get there and other info about what he saw from outside his body.
She confirmed all of it.”
“Variety Of Weird Dreams”
“I was put in a medically induced coma after a car accident in which the driver fell asleep at the wheel, swerved off the road, and my car flipped over three times. I suffered a brain bleed and traumatic brain injury, and was operated on, with the doctors removing a piece of my skull to relieve the pressure. I was put under for three weeks, and I remember distinctly having a two-week-long dream. I don’t really know how I knew it was two weeks long, but I had a variety of really weird dreams.
The dreams included scenarios like I was a box of ginger soda, and I was in a race against a box of Dr. Pepper in a supermarket. We both had a shopping cart we were on, and I barely won against Dr. Pepper. After that, I wanted ginger soda for weeks.
There was something involving a bunch of ninjas and a boat and an assassination that was going to occur. Another time, I was a fish stuck in some kind of enclosure that I had to escape. In a different one, I was in some kind of turf war with my fraternity (they were just my friends) against a rival fraternity, and we both had battleships. Gravy and mashed potatoes were involved somehow.
The last one, I was trying to escape this hospital I was at but I was too weak to walk, and could not figure out how to get out of my bed for the life of me.
When I woke up three weeks later, I was a little confused and had to piece together what happened from bits and pieces the doctors had told me. I would laugh very easily, like just from random phrases my friends who would visit me were saying to me. I had to undergo rehab for three months afterward, learning how to walk and talk again. The doctors told me that my recovery was pretty fast. I still suffer from impaired concentration and energy levels, and I managed to get prescribed Adderall for that issue.”
Just Like The T.V. Episode
“I was hit by a direct bolt of lightning when I was 12. Playing catch with my best friend in a light drizzle, next thing I know I’m in an ambulance, then next thing after that it’s been six days. Apparently you can have a lot of little heart attacks/stoppages when you’ve been hit by a bolt like that, even hours or days later, until your heart muscles all re-synchronize, and a defibrillator isn’t guaranteed to fix it.
I remember absolutely nothing, including the sensation of falling (or being) asleep. It was like that episode of Futurama with the Harlem Globetrotters and the time-skips; playing catch with Steven, then I’m in the ambulance with a huge guy looming over me, then I’m sitting up in a strange bed with lots of plastic on me.”
“Blue-White Searing Pain”
“I was in an induced coma for 16 days. It was three years ago nearly, but I still get flashbacks of my nightmares. Your brain tries to make some kind of sense of the limited sensory input like the sounds of the machines keeping you alive, the sensations in your body, the voices you hear…
At the beginning I think the coma was not complete — I felt my first emergency operation. I was in blue-white searing pain. I felt the knives slice through my flesh and every scrape of the scalpels as they slowly cut away my muscles and tissue. I had necrotizing fasciitis. Otherwise, known as flesh-eating disease. I screamed and screamed but nobody could hear me.
During the coma, I could hear voices and was trying to make sense of what they were saying. Their words often entered my dreams.
My husband kept telling me ‘You’re fine, you’re fine,’ but I knew even though the coma that he was lying.
I had terrifying repetitive dreams from which I couldn’t escape, couldn’t wake up from, couldn’t make sense of.
I thought my husband had run off with another woman, took our child with him, and that he wanted to kill me. Meanwhile, the poor angel was camping out in intensive care for three weeks by my side constantly.
The best thing that ever happened during my coma was when a doctor said, ‘Mme. Lang, you are in a hospital. Your dream is not real. You are in intensive care.’
This strong male voice that made sense was the single fragile thread of hope that I clung to in my Alice-in-wonderland nightmare.
If you’re ever by the bedside of a loved one in a coma, talk to them. They hear you. Tell them you love them, that you’re going to stay with them and explain that they’re in the hospital. Give them hope.”
Not Funny Sarah
“When I was 17, I fell into a natural coma for four days with a sudden case of viral encephalitis. Spent two nights in the ICU with a ventilator and feeding tube. The weirdest thing is how the bits and pieces come back to you after a while:
I remember the morning it happened. Waking up and knowing something was wrong, stumbling into my parents room, and trying to scream but slowly becoming paralyzed. My vision was the first to go, then my balance, then I couldn’t make coherent words, and then lost consciousness like I had been given a slow dose of anesthetic.
I remember waking up briefly one night with just my dad in the room and start losing my mind. I start frantically pulling off all my wires and tubes like I’m Neo in the Matrix. They had to hold me down (which was easy since I was down to about 120 lbs.) and sedate me (ironic). When I woke up for good a few days later, I didn’t remember any of it. I’ve recovered fully since but the experience still scars my dad/family, more than it ever affected me.
When I finally got back to school, it was my birthday a few weeks later and this one girl I hardly know goes ‘happy birthday, didn’t think you would make it to this one.’
Like what the heck Sarah? Dark joke, too soon… but thanks.”
“I Still Question My Memories”
“I was in a medically induced coma for about a week. I was metabolizing the propofol very quickly. I can remember coming to, my hands strapped to the bed and a ventilator tube in my throat. I would panic and try to communicate with my hands to the voices I heard in the room. My entire family was in the room during one of those times waking up. I was so frustrated that I couldn’t communicate, I ended flipping them all off with both hands as the nurse administered more medication and I passed out again. My family was relieved that I was still there and laughed.
When I finally came out of the coma, it took me a few days to learn to use my legs again. I had the craziest most vivid hallucinations and my sense of what is real and what was a hallucination is still kind of fuzzy. I know the totem pole of people smoking and blowing all of their collective smoke through the hole in the roof wasn’t real, that’s so crazy it’s obvious. But I don’t know if all the nurses, conversations with family members are real. I still question my memories to this day and it’s been about eight years.”