A Coma, PTSD & My Own Personal Battle

Sometimes we get lost in our own heads. Our minds can be a dangerous or a beautiful place to be. Often at the same time too. We all have busy thoughts racing around at the speed of FTL, thoughts flashing past each other, microns away from colliding. It’s when these thoughts depart from being a near miss to collide catastrophically that trouble brews.

My personal battle came about after a month long coma caused by my pancreas deciding one day that it wanted to die, and take everything with it when it did. Cheers for that, dickhead! Whilst my organs shut down one by one, I was put into an induced coma to help my body rest and recover. A ventilator played a good job at being my lungs, a dialysis machine cleaned my blood whilst pretending to be my kidneys. Various lines in, out and up (yep, up...) supplied me with nutrients, a unique drug cocktail that Pablo Escobar would have been proud of, and more pipes took waste away.

There was a critical problem though. Apart from me dying, that is. This problem no one knew about but me. In fact, I only subconsciously knew about it. Whilst my body was self destructing, my heart stopping then almost bursting like a popped watermelon, my mind thought it’d be a great idea to stay awake and witness the debacle that was happening on the bed. No I didn’t shit it, I had pipes. It soaked up everything going on around me. Every sound, voice, noise, feeling, movement, breeze, smell, the lot. From the music played by the night shift buzzing on pro plus, to the tv chattering away in the background. Every jab of the needle, every damn tug on the catheter that yanked my gentleman’s sausage around like a puppy and a new bone, every violent shake of my body whilst they tried to shift the pneumonia, the smell of the next shifts perfume, the iodine... you get the picture.

My brain soaked all of this relentless information up, churned it all together, smashing the information up more smoothly than a Ninja Juicer and made up its own version of events with it. Because there was no visual experience, my eyes are shut because I’m dying remember, it had free reign to conjure up the worst scenarios it could think of. I cut my own throat and jumped into the sea. I was a hospital experiment and my legs had been replaced with a Spanish bulls legs. My entire neuro and nervous system had been removed and it was being used to control a VR F1 race system. I got a snake pregnant. These are just a tiny example of what my brain stored into my memory as an actual event. There are so many I simply can’t talk about. The terror they bring is haunting.

These events are, as far as my brain is concerned, real. They have been conjured up and actually stored as real memories. The confusion they cause when they pop up is unreal. They’re memories that surface so are in effect real but I know I don’t and never have had a bullocks legs, as fine as they are, as my own. Yet this memory says yes you did. The fight that goes on in my head is a battle that I’d punt will never end. I fear it’ll end up destroying me, but I fight as hard as I can anyway. Because that’s what I do.

This has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to write, or talk about. There is no way out from it. Only triggers to snap the memories out of their locker and into life.You know when you’re just ambling along and a random childhood memory pops up and you think lovely memory but why now? Well something triggered that memory. Now imagine I’m talking to someone, a pretty girl for instance. I’m chatting away with the ego of a lion. She’s says something, just a word within a sentence and all of a sudden this memory pops up and there you are. In a purpose built rehabilitation centre for adults that were born with the lower body of a seal. A centre built by McDonalds House. The water is tepid, the sounds are echoing, the smell of chlorine burns your nostrils. You’re sliding into the water flapping your tail and propelling yourself through the water.

It’s. so. Fucking. Real.

But it’s not real. It can’t be. It doesn’t make sense. It is real because why am I remembering it? Don’t be ridiculous, that never happened. It did happen! I can remember it clearly! Even taste the salty air! “You’re crazy mate” she says, and she’s never seen again. I know I’m not crazy, I know these aren’t real but they are so real. yeah I know, you’re confused? Imagine me then...

I’m glad I got this out. It’s taken a long time to write. Will it help? Who knows... Time will tell my friends, time will tell.

Forgive me if I don’t respond to comments straight away. I’m sure you’ll understand.

Big love as always,

CS