While I Was Sleeping

Gradually I've begun to remember bits of my comatose state: The swimming-through-mud feeling of trying to surface to awareness. The frightening dreams. The intense and very real spiritual warfare, a battle as unto death. The fog of being strapped in a chair with daytime television on to "stimulate" me, vaguely registering that people were in my room, but unable to comprehend that, let alone communicate. It was like watching someone through opaque glass underwater, visible but obscure and unreachable. And the weeks of living in the shadowland between my coma and full awareness, with times of frustration beyond belief.

I remember Tim holding one of my hands, a neurologist the other, and telling me to squeeze their hands. Unable to do so or to speak, I felt my brain screaming, "Why can't I do this? Maybe I'm dying." Later, my inability to use the call button left me banging a spoon on the bedside table for an hour and a half. No one came. They thought it was the repetitive motor response of a brain-damaged woman.


http://www.christianitytoday.com/tc/2005/002/4.44.html