“There’s no way her fingers could
be moving. She’s out,” someone else
said.
I’m right here! I wanted to scream.
I can hear you!
“Maybe she’s having a seizure.”
Then another masked face ap-
peared right in front of my face, and
I remember a strange smell, and then
everything went dark again. They
wrote “mild seizure” on my chart.
People have the wrong idea about
what a medically induced coma is.
They think it means you’re totally
unconscious, unable to see or hear
or respond in any way. But that’s nothow it is. For weeks after the trauma,
I felt like I was locked in a nightmare,
imprisoned in my body. Sometimes
I was unconscious, but other times
I existed in a state that has no easy
comparison.
I couldn’t focus on anyone or any-
thing, but I could hear sounds and
feel sensations. I was so hot all the
time that it felt as if my body were on
fire. I began having thoughts that were
almost hallucinations about lying in a
pool of water.
Occasionally, I would hear a familiarvoice, and that brought some comfort.
Whenever Sean came into the room,
he would call out, “Hey, honey, I’m
here.” I know that only because he has
told me so since then, not because I
remember it. He says I would open my
eyes and look around like I was look-
ing right through him. I was too out
of it to think, Oh, that’s Sean, but I did
sense the familiarity. I relished when
someone would hold my hand, stroke
my head, or comb my hair. That was
the good part.
The dreams were the bad part.
Over and over, I had graphic night-
mares about being attacked. I now
know that the dreams came when
the nurses were cleaning my wounds.
Although I was heavily sedated, my
blood pressure would spike, and they
would see my face grimacing. Even
in that state, I recognized the pain,
but I couldn’t process it, so my brain
turned it into the only thing that made
sense: assault.
A medically induced coma can’t
take away all the pain—nothing can.
The coma just dulls it enough so that
you don’t actually die from the shock
of it all. But overmedicating can kill
you, too, so doctors must walk a fine
line. As a result, you are put into this
otherworldly haze of an experience
where your brain tries to put the
puzzle together under the influence
of heavy drugs. It’s not like a trauma-
induced coma, where you’re fully
unconscious while your brain resets
itself. It’s more like a deep dream stateMY MOUTH WAS
OPEN IN A SCREAMING
POSITION, BUT
NO SOUND CAME OUT.86 may 2019
Reader’s Digest