Being in a Coma is Like One Long Lucid Dream
Medically-induced comas are when doctors temporarily put patients into a deep state of unconsciousness to protect the brain from swelling after an injury or an infection.
They are different from a 'naturally-occurring' coma, normally caused by an injury, poison or lack of oxygen to the brain.
In a medically-induced coma, the person will regain consciousness once the drugs used to sedate them wear off.
Doctors can put patients into varying levels of unconsciousness depending on the treatment being given.
Sometimes patients are able to respond and nod, and therefore although they are not conscious, they may hear conversations around them and recall memories of the experience later.
After undergoing the experience herself, Miss Wineland decided to describe and share the experience of being comatose in a clip, uploaded to YouTube.
The video has now been viewed by more than 500,000 people.
‘They gave me drugs continuously for two weeks so I could be in this sleep state,’ Miss Wineland explained.
‘And when you’re in a coma you’re still here, you’re aware of everything around you, but it goes through his weird filter thing in your brain, it goes through the drugs.
‘It turns into something else when it hits your consciousness.’
During these two weeks, she hallucinated that she was in Alaska, an experience she describes as the ‘best’ part of being in a coma.
She said: ‘I’ve never been to Alaska or shown any interest in Alaska. But somewhere in my sleep I kept going to Alaska and there were pine trees and cones and I was staring at the most beautiful scenery, and there was a little deer in the corner.
Being in a coma is a very magnified and intense version of our own dreams. There's a lot we can we about ourselves
Claire Wineland, 18, who was put in a medically-induced coma for 2 weeks
‘It would be freezing cold and I wouldn’t care.’
After being revived from the coma she was told doctors had put ice packs on her body to bring her body temperature down, part of the treatment they used to fight the infection and bring her back to life.
Miss Wineland said: ‘I had a crazy high fever with a crazy infection and what they do for that is they put ice packs all around you.
‘So being iced, somewhere in my brain, I thought “ice”: “Alaska”.'
She said she remembers hearing her stepmother and grandmother talking, and in her mind she hallucinated that they were at a log-cabin-style girls summer camp gossiping about one of the members.
In reality, they were probably talking about a nurse or a family member.
She said: ‘In my head we were gossiping and I was in on the gossip, I was talking back to them. I remember so clearly saying something back to them.
‘But I didn’t [because I was in a coma]. It messes me up now when I think about it.
'It was a weird conversation in my head with everyone.’
Miss Wineland uploaded the video to her YouTube channel The Clarity Project, where she posts films about life with cystic fibrosis to raise awareness and show the humorous side of having an illness.
In the clip she remembers that when she was in a coma, doctors would be forced to put her body in uncomfortable positions, and her brain would make up a story for why she was lying in that particular way.
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