Woman Reveals What Its Like To Be In Coma After A Daunting Accident Left Her In One For Five Weeks

#1 Reality Behind Coma

Comas have always been perceived as a dream-like state where the patient feels free and light. It is even compared to a heaven like place. But is this all true? As revealed by Colleen Kelly Alexander, who was a victim of an accident that left her in the coma for 5 weeks, the experience for her was like going through hell. She vividly remembers the experience as a brief nightmare in which she felt trapped and suffocated.

#2 An Accident Which Changed Her Life

Kelly's life took a drastic turn when she met a horrifying accident on October 3, 2011. Kelly was run over by a truck when she was cycling back home from work. The accident mercilessly tore her body apart and crushed her bones. Prior to this she had undergone brain surgery in 2007 and had also been suffering from lupus for years. She lost so much blood that Kelly died twice once for 20 minutes and once for 10 minutes within 48 hours after she had the accident.

The newlywed bride was left with a smashed pelvic bone and legs, internally ripped arteries, rectum, and vagina, as well as a brain injury. Once stable, doctors put her in a medically induced coma for a period of 5 weeks, to be able to treat her. During this course of time, Kelly underwent 29 surgeries.

#3 Recalling The Nightmare

Its been seven years since the daunting incident and Kelly still remembers each and every detail of it. The triathlete opened up about her traumatizing experience in her book Gratitude in Motion, where she goes into a detailed impression of her life in those five weeks.

#4 Kelly Felt Helpless

In her book, Kelly describes her coma as a nightmare where she felt trapped. She could sense people around her but she was unable to focus on anything. All through the experience, she felt hot, as if her body was on fire.

#5 In Coma State Your Brain Reinvents Things To Try To Make Sense of The Situation

The brave survivor wrote, "Now, if you’ve never been in a coma, I’m going to guess that you think they look like the ones on television: The person is just totally 'out', no signs of awareness. That happens in the rarest of cases."

She added, "Usually, comas are more like twilight states — hazy, dreamlike things where you don’t have fully formed thoughts or experiences, but you still feel pain and form memories that your brain invents to try to make sense of what’s happening to you."

#6 She Couldn't Move

Kelly remembers her experience in the surgical room as a place where she was completely aware of her surroundings but couldn't focus or move, "After going into shock and flatlining in the ER, my next memories began once I was in the Surgical Intensive Unit. I remember being fully awake but unable to focus on anything; I could feel hands touching my head and comforting me, but I couldn’t move."

#7 She Felt Like Her Body Was Raped And Tortured While Dressing

Kelly says while her wounds dressing was changed her body thought she was tortured and she had no control over it, she felt completely helpless, "I heard beeping, dinging, and ticking; I could feel my lungs expand and contract, but had no control over what was happening. As they would do wound changes, they would increase my medications intravenously, which would sedate me further and help manage my pain."

"My body thought I was being raped and tortured; what was really happening was that the wounds from my anal and vaginal areas, stomach, hips, and leg were being unpacked, cleaned and then repacked. My brain couldn’t understand that they were really helping me."

#8 She Could Feel Her Husband's Presence

Kelly's memories include going through surgeries and getting medications which would numb her senses to make her feel less pain but at the same time her mind would be fully aware of her surroundings. She could even sense her husband's presence, "Certain voices were soothing. When my husband would be in the room, I could hear him, but I couldn’t understand his words. Throughout the five-plus weeks, they would bring me in over a dozen times to do various surgeries; when this happened, they would need to wean me off certain medications and make other dosing stronger so I could be completely sedated and paralyzed for surgery."

#9 Locked In Your Own Body Day And Night

"I remember being wheeled down hallways multiple times and seeing a bright runway of lights above me. I recall feeling the temperature changing in the halls and operating room with the temperature of my skin and even feeling the little hairs on my cheek move. Sometimes I would fall into a dream/sleep and think I was in a tropical climate; I would long for any sort of water to drink, and felt hot. I recall various places that I “went” through those weeks. Some were filled with family and friends who have died and were as clear as if I was walking with them in the present. I could feel the grass, the sunshine, and their hugs."

Kelly remembers her nightmares as darknolace where she felt like she was assaulted with no escape. She says she was silently crying for help but their was no one who could hear her, "When the nightmares became dark, I would think I was being brutally assaulted over and over as I cried for mercy. Most of my PTSD from the trauma was not from the actual act of getting run over and remembering every vivid detail; it was from being locked in my body day in and day out, not knowing what was real and what was a dream."

#10 She Was Shattered When She Woke Up

The experience has left daunting memories with her and it's effects are felt on her body to this date, "To this day, I often depersonalize and question the present. I gaze at my hands and wonder if they are really moving and I am truly alive."

After Kelly woke up from coma, her husband told her about the incident and Kelly was shattered to see the state of her body, "When I was finally weaned off the anesthesia, able to breathe on my own and brought back to consciousness, Sean had to tell me I’d been in a coma for a month and a half. Most of my lower body was shredded in ways that could never be properly put back together. There were stitches and tubes everywhere; I had withered to skin and bones and every minuscule movement was agony. It was likely I’d never been physically intimate with my husband again."

#11 Kelly Wanted To Give Up

Tired of going through the pain, Kelly was ready to give up on her life, "After months of this, I hit a point where I wasn’t sure I wanted to live anymore. What began to pull me through was a speech I’d heard by Nobel Prize laureate Jody Williams. In it, she said, 'Emotion without action is irrelevant.' All this emotion wasted feeling miserable and sorry for myself needed a direction. I could sit there wallowing in the pain or I could do something to improve my mental health, even while there was nothing I could do about the physical side of things. The direction I found was gratitude. I thought about all those people who had saved my life on the day of my trauma: the bystanders who leaped to action on the road, the EMTs, the medical team — and the ones who had plotted to save my life before it was even in peril: the blood donors and Red Cross volunteers."

"In the end, I had needed 78 units of blood and plasma from more than 150 donors. Modal Trigger Alexander at a superhero half marathon in 2012 It suddenly felt very real to me that I had the lifeblood of countless people running through my veins. People of all races, religions, genders, ages. People who liked rap music and country music. People whose lives looked nothing like mine, and who had rolled up their sleeves and donated this gift to a person they’d never met. I felt a responsibility to do something positive to honor these many, everyday heroes who’d saved me. My first project, from my rehab bed, was to organize a cycling tour to raise money for more adaptive bikes for disabled athletes."

#12 Brave Warrior Valiantly Fought Her Way To Recovery

Summing up her journey, the brave fighter proudly recalls her first marathon after she checked out of rehab, "We ended up raising more than $10,000. I’d always defined myself as an athlete and couldn’t picture my life not being one, so I pushed myself into rehab to get well enough to begin training again. Ten months post-trauma, I did the Superhero Half Marathon using a walker and toting a colostomy bag, in a Wonder Woman costume. I cried happy tears at the finish line because I had no idea I’d make it that far. I’d barely been able to walk across the room a couple months earlier. I gave my medal to my chief surgeon, one of my most important heroes. I’ve now completed dozens of half-marathons, triathlons and two marathons, and recently had the honor of becoming a guide for another challenged athlet"