When TikToker @_palevampshorty was 14 years old, she was in a medically induced coma for roughly three and a half to four months. She is now 22 and is talking about what her experience of being in a coma was like.
The doctors put her into a coma to preserve her body and help her body heal. She had gotten the flu, pneumonia, sepsis, and then an MRSA infection in her lungs.
It is rare to get these illnesses at once, and she got them all in three days. Back in 2018 or 2019, there were only 10 recorded cases of this happening to people in the U.S., and only three survived the ordeal.
In addition to the medically induced coma, she was on life support, dialysis, breathing machines, feeding tubes, and GI tubes. While she was in a coma, she was still able to feel and hear things, although she couldn’t move her body or respond at all.
When the doctors told her to move her hands, she would still try, even though she was unable to. The only thing she could physically do was clench her jaw.
“So, basically, you’re lying in this position where you cannot move,” she explained.
“You can hear the doctors, but I wouldn’t say all the time. I would say about 50% of the time you’re mentally coherent and you want to scream, cry, all of these emotions, but you can’t.”
The other 50% of the time, she was coming up with theories as to why she was comatose. Her first theory was that she was in the military on the base. The base got raided, and she was shot in the face.
As a kid, she had always wanted to go into the army, and she was familiar with the military base because her stepdad used to be in the military.
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Her second theory was that she had some kind of psychotic break, so her mom took her to the hospital to drain her of all her blood so she could harvest her organs.
And then, the third theory was that she was put on life support because her little brother had stabbed her in the neck with a pair of scissors.
These were the ways her brain tried to rationalize her situation and figure out what was going on. They were almost like dreams, but they also felt so real.
The first month she was in the hospital, she had a spiritual experience. She saw darkness and a huge tree in the middle of that darkness. Then, she saw orbs of energy floating around in various colors.
“I had to learn how to walk, talk, eat, drink,” she said. “I had to learn all of these things again because of how deconditioned my body was. I couldn’t even lift my arm up because that’s how weak I was.”
Without this experience, @_palevampshorty believes that she wouldn’t be the person she is today. She is grateful to have come out the other side stronger than ever.
By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
