OT: What it's like for the mind to be in a coma, especially a long one: survivor stories

Thirteen people in the article linked below recount their experiences of being in a coma, at least what they could remember of it.

Interestingly, those experiences varied tremendously, from "total blackness" in some cases, to the mind of one patient creating, and apparently then existing in, at least in his coma-dominated mind, a whole new separate reality, right down to the smallest detail.

And there was the account of one patient in a coma who claimed he seemed to be floating in the room above his body while looking down at it, like the reported "near-death" experiences of similar nature.

Really fascinating, though, is account no.7 in the article, in which a patient claims that while in a coma his mind constructed a totally new universe for him, with a wife, children, a job, and a "life" that seemed to him to go on for years.

Then, he claims, when he was taken out of the coma,

"I went through about 3 years of horrid depression, I was grieving the loss of my wife and children and dealing with the knowledge that they never existed. I was scared that I was going insane as I would cry myself to sleep hoping I would see her in my dreams. I never have, but sometimes I see my son, usually just a glimpse out of my peripheral vision, he is perpetually 5 years old and I can never hear what he says."

A common theme in all of these accounts is, as I have alluded, the extraordinary power of the mind to create various ways to deal with the unexpected and threatening circumstances that being in a coma had brought, whether through imposing a total mental blackout, or through the creation of an entirely new, though imaginary, universe for the patient to "live in" while in his coma state.

One can only assume, of course, that these reported accounts in the article are accurate, and whether they are anything more than just strange dreams the patients were having. Especially in the case of the patient whose mind supposedly created a totally alternate reality that, in his mind, lasted for years.

But it's arguably very true that a mind faced with the prospect of annihilation can, and will, go to amazing lengths to deal with the crisis at hand, attempting whatever it can in an effort to survive.

Interesting reading.

https://www.distractify.com/trending/2018/11/26/rc1ezea/what-is-it-like-being-in-a-coma

My father died a few weeks after suffering a brain aneurism. He was lucid for a week or so after the aneurism, until brain swelling got the best of him, then spent two weeks in a coma. While in the coma, a former business partner whom he loathed tried to visit him. When Dad heard the partner’s voice, he became agitated, so we banished the partner from the hospital. I spent many hours talking to the comatose version of him, telling him about my life, the weather, etc, thinking that something must be going on inside his brain. Doctors told us that he might live for a long time, since his body was in good shape and it was just his brain that wasn’t working. One night, my sister had a long talk with him, telling him that we all loved him, appreciated him and that he had prepared us well for life without him, and that he was free to go. She left the hospital and he passed away before she even got to her parked car. I am convinced his comatose brain heard her words.