While it is true that we have come leaps and bounds across since we started researching this matter, but we still have quite a long way to go. We are still not fully aware as to how our consciousness works.
But we can certainly learn a lot from the stories of the following coma patients. These people indeed have deep insight as to how our minds work.
I was in a coma for 5 weeks due to Meningococcal. I had A LOT of “dreams”, most that I can still remember pretty clearly.
You can definitely take in what is being said from the people around you. I was 12 at the time (22 now), and my mother was reading Lord of the Rings to me while I was out. I had some pretty vivid LotR related dreams.
Like eating some ice cubes under a bridge with Bilbo Baggins. When I woke up, it felt like I’d been gone a long time, but without knowing how long.
-(deleted)
I was in a coma (medically induced, with full-body paralysis) for six weeks. There were a handful of times that I distinctly remember where I “woke up” in my head. What was the experience like? It sucked.
-(TheOpus)
I spent 8 days in a coma last year after a particularly traumatic surgery, my waking thoughts were wondering if I had died or made it.
As, I couldn’t open my eyes and I was on a medical air mattress so I felt like I was floating, this lead me to think that I had died.
I remember thinking it wasn’t so bad and wondering if my dad would come find me. Once I realized that I was still alive, I thought I had been injured fighting in a war and worried that my wife might not know I was still alive.
-(tinman556)
When I “woke up” in my head, I could feel [my best friend] holding my hand and asking me to squeeze if I could hear her talking. I tried as hard as I could to squeeze my hand and I could feel it doing absolutely nothing.
When she let go to walk away, I was completely devastated. I tried to scream for her to stay, but obviously, nothing happened.
However, I was so glad that people I knew were there wherever I was and that I was getting help (even though I felt completely helpless).
-TheOpus
When I was finally brought out of the coma, my parents were there, which didn’t make any sense because my parents lived two states away at the time.
I eventually learned that they had been there the entire time I was in a coma. They dropped everything in their life and came to be with me and stayed there throughout the entire ordeal.
After a couple of days, some doctors came in and asked me a bunch of questions. The first question was what year it was.
That I knew because I remembered getting sick on New Year’s Eve, so I knew it was 2000. Next was who the President was. I answered Clinton, so I got that right.
Then they asked if I knew where I was. I assuredly said, “Honolulu” because, in my dreams, I had been in Honolulu.
When all of their faces had that confused Scooby Doo look is when I realized that wasn’t quite right, so I figured that I must have been back in Salt Lake City.
-TheOpus