16.
“I was in a medically induced coma (with induced, full-body paralysis) for six weeks. There were a handful of times that I distinctly remember where I ‘woke up’ in my head. What was the experience like? It sucked.”
“When I would wake up in my head, I had no idea as to what had happened. So, I’m fully conscious, I know that I’m me, but I can’t open my eyes, I can’t move a muscle and I can’t speak. The first time it happened was terrifying. I started to panic and for a minute there, I thought I might be dead. Then I realized that I was thinking, so that didn’t seem right. I tried to move and couldn’t. I tried to speak and couldn’t. I tried to scream and couldn’t.
The next time it happened was when my best friend came to see me. Again, I can’t move, I can’t see, and I can’t talk. But when I ‘woke up’ in my head, I could feel her holding my hand and asking me to squeeze if I could hear her talking. I tried as hard as I could to squeeze my hand, and I could feel it doing absolutely nothing. When she let go to walk away, I was completely devastated. I tried to scream for her to stay, but obviously, nothing happened. However, I was so glad that people I knew were there wherever I was and that I was getting help (even though I felt completely helpless). That kind of helped. I had to calm myself down again so that I could drift off again.
When I was finally brought out of the coma, my parents were there and that didn’t make any sense because my parents lived two states away at the time. I eventually learned that they had been there the entire time. They dropped everything in their lives and came to be with me and stayed there throughout the entire ordeal. After a couple of days (I think), some doctors came in and asked me a bunch of questions. The first question was what year it was — that I knew because I remembered getting sick on New Year’s Eve, so I knew it was 2000. Next was who the president was. I answered Clinton, so I got that right. Then they asked if I knew where I was. I assuredly said, ‘Honolulu’ because in my dreams, I had been in Honolulu. When all of their faces had that confused Scooby Doo look is when I realized that wasn’t quite right, so I figured that I must have been back in Salt Lake City (somehow). They appeared quite relieved when I came up with that.”