Hypercapnic Coma, Anyone?

[Soul]

Has anyone else experienced a hypercapnic coma? I spent a few days drifting into one last year and was taken to a hospital, ventilated and so on. It was a result of my lungs not being able to expel enough co2 and exacerbated by a respiratory infection, and although recovering from it has been a mixed bag, the experience itself was quite pleasant - like a film festival in my head and very little distress or discomfort.

We hear so much about hypercapnia launching panicky reactions and painful lungs that I wonder why the coma version was so much fun.

 

[AngelGirl]

Well once you are in coma you don't feel anything. I think that's what everyone on this forum want to achieve right before dying, so they don't feel pain.

Hypercapnia is supposed to be painful... I have never experienced it myself but that's what I read.. but once you are in coma it doesn't matter since you just don't feel that.

Why was the coma version fun? I think it might have had a similar effect as choking by strangling your neck and then releasing. That's supposed to make you high or something?

 

[Tortured_empath]

I'd love to be put in a medical coma for a year or so. Just to get some relief.

 

[RainAndSadness]

I'd love to be put in a medical coma for a year or so. Just to get some relief.

Same here. Coma must be nice. Just take a break from everything.

 

[Soul]

It was real far from a break from *every*thing - the dreams or hallucinations or whatever to call them were vivid, elaborate, spectacular, fantastic worlds. Kind of Inception-esque in terms of layered detail, but utterly creative fantasies. I served as the translator for the mourning robes that the widow of Osiris would wear for the rest of eternity. I was lying in ambush with other Kurd fighters while the Rolling Stones played a show in the desert below us. Up at the very top of the hill was a restaurant, where ... well, you get the idea. Vivid and ornate and wonderfully fun.

It took me a couple of days to slide into the coma, and I remember that I kept turning up my oxygen supply (which just made things worse, apparently), so I guess I was feeling suffocatey. But I don't remember any discomfort at all. I remember watching a whole movie with my eyes closed, and finding everything funny.

Because of my lung problems I'm accustomed to feeling physical panic when I'm underoxygenated, which I've always understood as the hypercapnia talking. So why didn't I get that sensation? My co2 levels were way way high when I got scooped up and hospitalized.

I wonder how it would have developed further if I hadn't been ventilated.

 

[paul29]

I have lived the coma film festival.
It was literal hell. Biblical hell.
I also envied the idea of the coma before I lived it.

Trust me. Don't.

 

[Soul]

I have lived the coma film festival.
It was literal hell. Biblical hell.
I also envied the idea of the coma before I lived it.

Trust me. Don't.

I'm sorry you went through such a terrible experience. Was it caused by hypercapnia? Did you experience physical discomfort?

I wonder why our experiences were so different.

 

[paul29]

I think we respond to our contexts. I was intubated and chemically sedated into a coma after a colossal overdose. My experience is probably best understood as ICU delirium.

The worst memory was a stretch in which I saw nothing but bright red, feeling like I was dying of dehydration, but being kept alive through IV, so I remained alive despite thinking I was dying. Literal hell on earth.

 

[Soul]

That is a pretty different scenario indeed. I wasn't intubated; I got "noninvasive ventilation" which is pretty awful too when you start coming to and there's a soft-bodied creature sucking on your face and you have no idea why.

But apart from that my experience was great. I can't understand why the hypercapnia caused no distress or discomfort.