Diabetic Coma: View From the Inside

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In the previous articles in this series on diabetic coma and high blood glucose (hyperglycemia, hyperglycaemia) you will have read about the symptoms of high blood sugar, what diabetic coma is, and how I got to the point of being in a diabetic coma. If you have not read those yet, here are the links: 

In this article I am going to tell you what it was like inside coma. That is, what I can 'remember'. I do not recommend doing what I did in order to find out whether what I tell you here, is fact or fiction. In my mind it was fact. Once out of coma, I can categorically state that it was fiction - it's funny how the mind plays Loci sometimes. Not only do your eyes deceive you, but your brain see's things that could never be there!

Sugar is great in small quantities. Our body functions by processing glucose, using insulin, into energy for cells. When this mechanism is disrupted, as it was for me when my pancreas was injured, the process is severely impaired and the left-over glucose accumulates in the blood. This can have hallucinatory consequences and major effects on the ability of nerves to function.

However, the most devastating effect of excess blood glucose is coma.

But before you, or any member of your family, get anywhere near that state of affairs, you should seriously consider getting checked for diabetes by your physician or pharmacist. If you cannot make the time, or cannot afford to attend either practice, then the next best alternative is to do it yourself, with a blood glucose monitor.

I believe it was the sugar that made me hallucinate (basically the lack of fluid in my blood stream, I suppose), but it could have been the extreme levels of insulin that were pumped into me. Enough to kill a horse.

Kill or cure medicine.

This is a view from inside a diabetic coma caused by high blood sugar (hyperglycemia). Hearing, but not processing the incoming information as normal. It is a view of coma from within, 'looking' out.

Now, it may have been the medication, but I contend to this day that it was the sugar.

What about it?

Well, something caused me to hallucinate.

So, Saturday night I remember peeing - lots of times. No I don't mean I remember lots of times. I mean I remember that I pee'd lots of times. That's it! I don't remember anything else! Well not anything else that actually happened.

I think it went dark for some time. Well, it seems to me that it went dark for some time. The sort of dark that you think you go through when you first go to sleep. You don't know that there is nothing between starting to sleep and dreaming, but you have an idea that there is. And if you are wondering: is this where he tells me that he 'had a revelation', 'saw the light at the end of the tunnel', someone says to 'walk this way', and then, 'Bang! he's back with the living'?

Rest easy my friends.

I saw no light. Not the way anyone else has described their near-death experience. No-one called me to the light. Well, they couldn't could they? There was no light!

The next thing I "remember" is sound. A metaphysical sound. The sort of sound that is in your head and has not got there through your ears. A dreaming sound. Conversation. Conversation unrelated to my circumstance. Not that I understood it to be my circumstance in any way.

And I cannot confirm that the conversation took place, or not.

But it was a conversation that did relate to my circumstance. And somehow I did know that it must be happening around me, somewhere. Or not, I don't know.

Confused?

You should have been me! I am as confused now as I was then.

I reckon I am pretty much a rational kind of guy. Laid back? Yes. Able to analyse situations? I would like to think so.

Anyway, this conversation seemed to be about one of the nurses looking after me. It felt like a black nurse, in my mind's eye. I don't know why, or whether it has any significance. She was about to get married and I was holding her up from getting ready for the wedding.

I have not been able to confirm this, as I was moved to a high-dependency ward from the near-death ward.

At what point this conversation sparked in my head I do not know. But it went on, seemingly, for a long time. And it went on more than once, as I recall. To the best of my "knowledge"!

And it concerned me. Concerned, as in it made me feel guilty.

"Why was I causing this situation?", I asked myself, mentally.

"Why am I dreaming this?".

I must have known I was dreaming. I knew I wasn't awake. What's happening? Ooh, weird!

The next thing I "remember" is "looking" across the ward.

At this point I must have come to the conclusion that I was in a hospital ward. Why? Because what I saw were hospital beds. Nothing strange there! But the other thing I "saw", was strange.

Salvadore Dali was acting in a scene in "Pirates of the Caribbean".

Which one? I don't know!

But I did recognise those two pirates. The double-act, short bald-headed one and the skinny, taller one whose eye-ball falls out. I've always been bad with names.

And what was happening?

I have absolutely no idea. It was blurry: I know that. It was funny, 'cos I felt a flush of comedy wash over me. But what was it about - who cares? It was real to me in a spectacles-off kind of way. It was real to me in a just-out-of-reach-hearing kind of way. It was real to me in a

"If I get up I can go and be an extra in the film"

kind of way. They were real enough to touch, without even thinking that I could go and touch them.

I must have had the thought that this was an hallucination, because I knew that Salvadore Dali was dead. But then, could it be a Christmas Panto for the ward members? Well, or something like that. Can't describe it - it had an essence of being too weird.

And then I woke up.

Or at least, I became aware of my surroundings, in a reality sort of way.

That's when I found out what had actually gone on.

Conclusions:

1. No white light happened when I was close to death.

2. Nobody called me to come and join them.

3. God did not want me then. If there is a God.

Well, those are the conclusions I come to. And it is my hallucination, so I'll cry if I want to! Damn song lyrics keep creeping into my consciousness.

The period of my life that was "lost" to coma, hallucinations and medication is about 8 days. I "know" what happened in those 8 days. And then someone told me what had happened in those 8 days.

I've told you about the period when I was falling into a coma, and what emergency personnel did to get me to hospital. And I have told you that after 8 days, I floated into reality. But what reality happened in between? I have learned since:

• I was just about dead.

• My blood-glucose level was recorded at 77.1 mmol/L (UK measurement), which is equivalent to approx 1388 mg/dl (US), when I arrived at hospital, once they could get a reading. This is equivalent to about 15 times the average normal reading.

• They did not think they were going to be able to revive me.

• My son was told and he got in touch with the rest of my family, telling them that they needed to get down to see me quickly or they probably would not see me alive again. This is something I would not wish on anyone to have to do. So do not do what I did.

• I was put on a regime of extreme levels of insulin. I don't know what level, but when I was back with the living, and administering insulin myself, whilst in hospital, the level I was injecting was 50 something's per injection. When the nurses were doing it before this, it was higher.

• At the time I was injecting insulin, my blood-glucose level was still well into the 20's, from a level of mid-30's.

• I had been through 3 wards, from the near-death ward (I don't know what it was really called), through the high-dependency ward; (possibly another ward); and onto the general ward.

• Originally they could not get a blood-line into a vein because the glucose level was too high. Eventually they managed to get one into my foot.

• When they were trying to get the line in, and sometimes when they put a new line in, I pulled it out. My son had to hold me down to stop me pulling the blood-lines out. So I was conscious enough to know that something was being done to me.

• Once they had been able to keep me alive, they were certain that I would need amputations, because everyone before me with levels anywhere near the level I had reached, had needed amputations. I could still require amputation(s), due to neuropathic nerve damage.

• The blood-glucose level of 77.1 was the highest the hospital had recorded without that person being dead

• I would hate to estimate how many people were involved in keeping me alive, and how much it cost to do so. I am grateful to them, and to the UK National Health Service - without them I would be dead.

But I did come out of the end of the drainage tube alive!

But not unscathed!

That's another story.

• You now know the coma-inducing symptoms.

• You now know what not to do if you want to ensure you do not fall into a hyperglycaemic diabetic coma.

• Death is a real possibility, if not a probability, if you let this happen to you.

• There are things that you can do to stop it, as you now know what to look for.

• Hallucinations are a weird consequence, but I do not recommend finding out for yourself.

• Not everyone going through a near-death experience has a God enlightenment moment.

• You can come out the other end!

Going into a coma was not the most scary thing that has happened in my life.

Why?

Because I did not know it was happening.

Hallucinating whilst in the coma has bolstered my knowledge that Gods are a figment of the imagination.

There is life after near-death, but not after death itself. But that life can be pretty painful if what has happened to me happens to you.

That is the other story.

If your faith compels you to want to take issue with the views I have stated here, then I would be most happy to discuss these through the medium of comments.