What I feared was the usual stuff-- screaming out the name of a woman who was not my wife, etc.
No white light, no partner, no dog. Later, when I was on lots of Dilaudid, I did have delusional dreams where I would sneak home and walk the dogs, yes-- and I also rode the Grizl in a delusional dream as well! The dreams were so vivid that when I woke up, it took over five minutes to convince myself: "That could not have happened. You do not have to remind your wife that you didn't give the older dog his medication, or plug the Grizl into the charger." But dang, they felt real!
Right before I coded-- I think-- I was talking to the older ER doctor, and he was saying, "I have no idea what's wrong with you, that's it, I've got nothing left in my bag of tricks," and then there's just this... void which could have been a few seconds, or could have been minutes or hours.
I became aware of floating in a deep red void, I could feel the top half of my body, but had no sensation or concept of the rest. The I saw something like flagella or tentacles, but I knew my brain wasn't processing it right. I thought, "those could be my legs, in jeans" but they were very far away, and I could only feel the right one. I thought, "Well, that's not good, but could be worse. No nerve contact with the left leg, so let me just... fire some amino acids or neurotransmitter precursors in that general direction." And like a video game, I had this mental image of shooting molecules towards my left leg.
And suddenly, I was aware of my left leg, though not as vividly as my right. And I thought, "Ah, okay, that's progress. Let's focus on body integrity-- just holding everything together, e.g., not dissipating into this void. Okay. I think this is working."
Once I was more confident in my own corporeal existence, another thought followed quickly: "You're not getting out of the hospital today, tomorrow, this week, or next week. This is going to last a long time. Just focus on existence, staying alive-- avoid looking too far ahead, though sometimes I may have to."
And yeah, there were moments when I thought, "Oh, man. I absolutely can't do three, four, five weeks of this." It was painful, sure, but the meds worked very well, generally, and I have chronic pain anyway, so WTF. The issue was profound discomfort, feeling incredibly unhealthy. Hard to explain.
The hallucinations, delusions, post-intubation psychosis, extreme panic attacks etc. were really disturbing, but it helped being a clinician. I'd snap out of a delusion -- I expect that I appeared to be asleep, mostly, with brief moments of opening my eyes, until I woke up completely -- and then, I'd tell the nurse or doctor, "Okay, a lot of psychiatric symptoms right now, but nothing outside what we might expect. Jerking awake abruptly is probably THIS medication, which is for blood pressure but is known for that side effect, the paranoia and panic is caused by THAT, and the hallucinations are the post-intubation psychosis." They'd swap out some medications for others, and over the course of four or five days, that all settled down and I could sleep for four hours at a time instead of only two.
Those delusions were really bad, terrifying. I'm glad that I am a therapist, that I've had a lot of therapy myself, and that I'm experienced with altered states of consciousness.
The most hysterically funny moment was real early on in the first week, when I'd been off the vent maybe two or three days. I think I'd just done some PT, too, so I was fully awake. Docs came in and asked me my name, my birthday, the date, the day of the week, and where I was. I answered flawlessly, and they're looking at each other and nodding and smiling, like, "This is cool! Dude doesn't have brain damage, or probably not much!"
Then they asked, "Okay, do you know where you are in the hospital?"
And I snorted derisively. "Of course. I'm in the ICU, in your Owl Aviary Unit, which also seems to be some kind of highway rest stop. Had no idea you guys were doing that kind of therapy here, very impressive facility." The doctors were absolutely deadpan, didn't burst out laughing, total pros. Damn, those cats had game!
The owls were not scary, they were benevolent, overlooking us from some gallery or balcony. They were there to help, and knew what they were doing.
Yes, they were a little spooky, for sure-- I will not pretend that the sight of maybe a half dozen five-foot-high Research Owls (and a couple of fledglings, I think, too) staring at me was not unsettling. But so were a lot of tests and procedures. Once I realized I was in really deep sh!t, I stopped sweating the small srtuff.
We also got the meds wrong for one of several full-body MRIs, and I wound up with the Nova Scotia MRI team, which was running the scan in parallel via a multidimensional portal, and I woke up in an old hotel that-- weirdly-- had the same friendly nurses as the hospital. A few days later, the second time we ran the scan, the meds were still heavy, but manageable; I didn't try to get out of the tube. I fell asleep and flinched once, responded to instructions, but it was a tiny movement, not enough to throw off the scan.
As they rolled me out of the tube, it was like a science fiction movie-- I guess I'd been in for 45 or 50 minutes-- and the techs were saying, "Great job, man. Look at these numbers... all the data is perfect, we got just what we needed. What happened the first time?"
And I answered, "Yeah, last time I wound up transported through the portal, and woke up with the Nova Scotia team. I swear, they looked just like you guys, they just had Canadian accents or whatever." That got a big laugh.
So I did have some very, very bizarre and surreal experiences, but I don't know that I was conscious while I was dead-- I think I may have been, but who knows? My theory is I probably did black out briefly, but that the red void part was happening while my heart was stopped; when I could feel my left leg may have been when it restarted, but that's just a wild theory.
