A woman who was put in a medically-induced coma for 18 days has revealed what it really feels like, including whether she could hear anything and if she experienced time at all.
Beffy, from South Wales, also described the ‘deep state of psychosis’ she experienced when she came back around in a viral X/Twitter post that has garnered nearly 18 million views at the time of writing.
The 30-year-old, who was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease in 2014, wrote: ‘Lots of people have questions about being in a coma and I have absolutely no issue with answering any of them.’
The first misconception she addressed was that being in a coma feels like ‘being asleep’, with Beffy explaining: ‘My mind was active and I fully believed I was in Australia and I was panicking in my head because of the spiders.’
She explained that this was strange considering Beffy had never travelled to the continent.
Beffy shared that she kept ‘experiencing seeing bright lights whilst in my coma and they hurt my brain’, adding that she is now ‘triggered’ by harsh lighting.
‘I thought I was going to die,’ Beffy continued, while recalling being ‘reintubated and induced into my second coma’ after her lungs began failing.
‘It was like walking up a steep hill but I couldn’t breathe at all,’ she said, adding it was the ‘scariest thing I’ve ever experienced’.
(Stock image) A woman who was put in a medically-induced coma for 18 days has revealed what it really feels like, including whether she could hear anything and if she experienced time at all
Beffy, from South Wales, also described the ‘deep state of psychosis’ she experienced when she came back around in a viral X/ Twitter post that has garnered nearly 18 million views at the time of writing
When she was brought back from the coma, Beffy was in a ‘deep state of psychosis’ that was marked by a number of frightening hallucinations – including the appearance of a ‘creepy figure standing behind my bed’.
Beffy imagined that the doctors and nurses treating her were ‘taking me underground to perform rituals on me’ and that they were ‘getting off with each other’.
‘I thought they had taken me to Morrisons, to a car showroom, to a bowling alley,’ she continued. ‘I thought the nurses were smuggling in alcohol to drink while on shift.
‘It was wild.’
Beffy later admitted she was blown away by the reaction to her tweet while encouraging X users to ask her any other questions they might have – noting nothing is ‘off limits’.
She clarified that she didn’t experience ‘time whilst in my coma’ before adding her second time felt like ‘five minutes’ when, in reality, she was out for a week.
Beffy also shared: ‘I couldn’t feel anything sensory. I was catheterised, so didn’t need to pee.’
In the comments section of her tweet, which racked up over 225,000 likes, Beffy later explained she was placed in a medically-induced coma after she ‘developed sepsis’ as a result of taking the wrong medication for Crohn’s Disease.
When she was brought back from the coma, Beffy was in a ‘deep state of psychosis’ that was marked by a number of frightening hallucinations – including the appearance of a ‘creepy figure standing behind my bed’
‘I have Crohn’s Disease, have done for 11 years, and the medication I was taking was not working for me,’ Beffy wrote. ‘This led to my bowel perforating and I developed sepsis.’
Beffy runs a blogpost called ‘Beffy with the Bad Belly’ where she shares her experiences living with Crohn’s Disease – including being rushed to hospital after she ‘collapsed a few days into January…when attempting to go to the toilet’.
She also opened up about the relief of getting an accurate diagnosis despite struggling with ‘stomach problems’ for most of her life – with Beffy writing that her GP ‘tried to palm me off with IBS or constipation’ for two years.
It was only after a private consultation with a gastroenterologist ‘and numerous MRIs, stool samples, and colonoscopies’ that Beffy received her Crohn’s Diagnosis in 2014.
Commenting under Beffy’s post, several X users praised her for discussing her time in a coma openly and honestly, with one person writing: ‘You are truly a warrior with [a] big heart.’
Others left more questions for her to answer, including whether Beffy still got her periods while she was in a coma.
‘No, I think due to all the trauma my body was going through, my periods stopped and, as of February this year, they’ve just come back.’
Another asked whether Beffy was able to ‘perform higher-level thinking’ in her comatose state or ‘was it more like you were in a dream where you just kind of react to the situation(s) your brain made up?’
Commenting under Beffy’s post, several X users praised her for discussing her time in a coma openly and honestly
The latter, Beffy confirmed.
Others who have been in a coma previously shared what it felt like on a Reddit thread that received over 6,000 responses.
Some people reported they had ‘no recollection of being in a coma’ at all, with one user writing: ‘I had a seizure and was in a medically induced coma for three days when I was 17.
‘To be honest I don’t remember anything. I remember fading in and out of the anesthesia trying to pull my breathing tube out and and that my hands were restrained to the bed so I couldn’t.
‘When I woke up and was coherent I couldn’t recall anything from actually being in the coma. They had even moved me to a hospital over 100 miles away. It was really just nothing but black.
‘No dreams, no lights, no voices, just nothing.’
Another person shared that they were in a coma for 11 days after suffering a severe brain injury.
‘I don’t remember being in a coma or waking up from a coma,’ they continued. ‘I lost several years of memories prior to the coma and my brain didn’t really start to “retain” information again until six weeks after I cam out of the coma.’
However, a third Reddit users revealed she ‘had nightmares the entire time’ as a result of the ‘medicine they were using to knock me out’.
She recalled how she dreamed ‘I had been kidnapped by a nurse and was a victim of sex trafficking’ or how ‘my drug addict aunt had her friends rob my sister and her husband’.
‘I thought I was constantly being grabbed by people under my bed.’
What is Crohn’s Disease?
Crohn’s disease is an agonising digestive condition that blights the lives of 115,000 people in Britain and as many as 1.6 million in the US.
Symptoms include abdominal pain, diarrhoea and potentially dangerous weight loss. Magician Dynamo is a famous sufferer.
Eight out of ten patients will need a part of the intestine removed as it becomes so damaged it prevents digestion.
Its cause is still not known and there is currently no cure but some with the condition have considered their diet to be a factor.
However, bacteria is already known to play a major role in causing Crohn’s disease, in addition to genetics and diet.
Conventional treatment is with drugs that suppress the immune system’s production of a protein called TNF, which causes inflammation.