A woman who was in a coma for three weeks has opened up about the ordeal, including the terrifying things she experienced.
Amanda van der Gulik, a Youtuber known for connecting candidly with her followers, didn’t hold back as she described a harrowing health crisis that nearly took her life.
What started as a mild illness turned out to be something far more serious. Amanda explained that doctors initially believed she had nothing more than a bad cold.
But when antibiotics didn’t help and her condition continued to deteriorate, things took a frightening turn.
She said her health got so bad that she couldn’t move, prompting a return visit to the ER with her partner.
That’s when the real problem was uncovered: the pneumonia had spread to both lungs and her oxygen levels were dangerously low. She was immediately admitted to the hospital.
But the hospital didn’t have an ICU. With her condition worsening, doctors arranged for her to be transferred to a facility that did, but it was 45 minutes away. In order to safely make the trip, Amanda had to be placed in a medically induced coma.
Doctors reassured her partner that the coma would only last a few days, just long enough for Amanda’s body to stabilize before beginning her recovery.
But things didn’t go according to plan.
Instead of improving, Amanda’s condition got even worse. She developed ARDS – acute respiratory distress syndrome – a severe complication that meant, as Amanda put it, her “lungs had given up” and she could no longer breathe on her own.
Her time in the coma stretched from days to three full weeks. And during that time, Amanda said she experienced something she could never have imagined – nightmarish, deeply emotional dreams that felt more real than life itself.
“I had the craziest dreams I had the craziest scariest nightmares of my life, it was awful,” she said. “They call it ICU psychosis but its so real it’s almost more real than reality.”
She continued: “Every experience in my life that meant something to me, every fear I’d ever had, every manipulation that had ever happened to me, they all got mixed together and became this horrible nightmare horror story.
“It’s like I lived a second life and the memories are so strong, they’re stronger than normal regular life memories that I have and they were so clear they’re still clear, they have not gone away.”
Though she describes the experience as “awful,” Amanda also shared that the grip those dreams had on her has gradually weakened over time.
Finally, after three terrifying weeks, her lungs began to recover. She was slowly brought out of the coma and started on her path to healing.
