Time Lost and Coma Dreams: My Experience Fighting the Coronavirus

This is an excerpt from a longer piece I am working on about my hospitalization from March to May 2020 after being stricken with Covid-19. I want to tell my story in a linear fashion, an orderly manner — as if doing so would help me make sense of what happened when the virus crept into my body and took root in my lungs, my blood, my kidney, my heart, my skin. Rather than a clear narrative, my story jumps out of me in fits and starts, in factual, composed, matter-of-fact monologues, in tears of sadness over time lost, in the darkness when I recall too quiet moments alone in the hospital, in moments of pure joy at being alive. It’s all vignettes and moments rather than an epic tale with a neat beginning, middle, and end.

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For 28 days in March and April last year, I was in a medically-induced coma and on life support. Covid-19 pneumonia had set up camp in my lungs and infiltrated my blood stream. I was admitted to the intensive care unit at NYU Langone’s Kimmel Pavilion in Manhattan on March 17th. When I arrived at the hospital, I remarked on how large my room was to the EMTs who brought me — safely, quickly — from the Cobble Hill ER where I had spent the afternoon waiting, praying, and pushing aside thoughts of the inevitable. Now, in the late evening, the Brooklyn and Queens skylines were lit up, buildings twinkling in the distance. It was an amazing view. I didn’t know then that I wouldn’t see that view again for another month.

That first night passed both quickly and slowly. Time slowed down as I monitored my oxygen using the selfie feature on my phone. I watched it drop to 90, willed it to reach back up to 92, begged it to stretch for 94. I did that for an hour — maybe less, time takes on a different shape in the hospital — until the nurse on night duty gently chided me, chuckling at my ingenuity, and urged me to rest. But I couldn’t rest that night; time sped up as I thought anxiously of Bebe and Ephraim — would I see them again? Would I die here? Would I be alone in my last moments? I furiously tried to imprint on my brain my last images of them — Bebe standing in the living room in her leggings and oversized Stanford t-shirt, looking worried, but pretending to be brave. And then Ephraim, dropping me off at the ER, assuring me that everything would be o.k., but his face marked by fear. I had to do everything I could to get home to them.

The next day, my oxygen continued to descend to dangerously low levels. Though I have no memory of the decision making or the procedures that followed, the medical team decided to put me on a ventilator to help my breathing. Because I would be on the ventilator for a long period of time, the team performed a tracheostomy — cutting a hole in my throat — intubated me, and induced a coma so that I could remain calm and let the ventilator do its work. Due to the severity of my condition, the team also placed me on mechanical circulatory support — ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) — to pump blood and take over the work of my lungs. For 28 days, while I was in that coma — as I fought for my life — all I had were my dreams.

I dreamt first of Canada, or at least I think I dreamt first of Canada. Time doesn’t exist inside of a coma, so I might be repainting over other images and out of sequence. But the memory of my “time” in Canada is strong. I was in medical school and had a nemesis — the guy from Cash Cab was my academic foe, demeaning my intellectual capabilities and medical instincts. I had a burgeoning romance with the guy from the International Flavors coffee commercial — he looked like Waldo and liked to drink hard lemonade. At one point, we were both (s)trapped — along with two other medical students — to a hospital bed. It was a test that the residents were putting us through; we had to be able to get up from the bed and then walk up the stairs. Coffee Guy made it up and out as did my other bedmates. But I stayed stuck in the bed. I asked Coffee Guy to help me, but the residents told him, “No, she has to get up by herself.” I asked another escaped bedmate — the lady from a Toyota commercial — if I could roll off the bed onto her body (I asked her to lie on the floor next to me), and then I could crawl up the stairs to the exit. The resident told her, “No, you cannot help her.” After what felt like innumerable tries, I finally swung my legs off the side of the bed, propped myself up on my elbow, and rolled, clumsily, onto the floor. As Coffee Guy, Toyota Lady, and the residents looked on, I wriggled slowly across the cold linoleum, army crawled up the steps, and found myself in the Toronto airport.

Snow covered the runways at Toronto Pearson International. The windows were ice cold to the touch; I pressed my palm against the glass and thought, “When did they bring me to Toronto? How did they get me here? By plane? By car? Why did I have to go to medical school in Canada to get better? I need to go home.”

I suddenly found myself on a plane — in business class on Korean Airlines, to be precise. Even in my dreams, I travel in style. I sat in a middle seat — a comfortable leather throne, the aisle to the right of me, and a nurse — my nurse? — to my left. The cabin was unusually cold, and I was wrapped in a huge parka and a blanket. But the food was so good! I had galbi and a warm radish soup with meatballs. I ate rice and kimchi and drank chrysanthemum tea. And the crew brought me a cake to celebrate my win. I don’t know what I won, but I ate the cake.

And then, as quickly as I had found myself on the plane, we started our descent into LaGuardia. We landed and taxied to the gate. My fellow passengers began to deplane, but I couldn’t move. I was still strapped into my seat. I turned slowly to the nurse — my nurse? — next to me and asked for her help. When I turned towards her, I noticed, for the first time, an IV bag attached to my left arm hanging from that spot in the airplane ceiling where the oxygen masks drop from. I flagged down a flight attendant over to my seat and asked her to help me. She smiled warmly and flirted with the other flight attendant. I whispered to her, “Are you going out on a date with him?” She didn’t reply. She fidgeted with my seatbelt but couldn’t help me out. She walked away and slid the cabin door shut behind her. I had to make my own way — again — out of my confinement. No one helped me. But I did it. I unhooked the seat belt, rolled over onto the carpeted airplane floor, and crawled my way to the jet bridge. The air was bitter cold on the bridge — colder than Toronto, even. By the time I arrived at the end of the jet bridge, I was walking, upright, and made my way to a taxi.

That taxi took me to an ER in Brooklyn on Myrtle Avenue, across the street from my friend Vik’s house. Once again, I found myself strapped to a bed, alternating between staring at the ceiling and watching a British 70’s soap opera on a tiny television hanging in the corner of my room. Once again, I was trapped with strangers in a room. Once again, everyone made it out of the room except for me. The taxi driver who dropped me off at the ER returned. He told me he came to get me out. He showed the nurses my papers. He said that he was there to help me cross the street. He brought a wheelchair to the door. The nurses blocked his way. They wouldn’t let me leave.

But then Vik showed up, and I knew I could finally go home. But he wanted to stay a little longer. He wanted to watch the 70’s K-tel commercials playing on the tv and groove out to Kool and the Gang, Bill Withers, and Gladys Knight and the Pips. I was so angry at him. It was just like him to put aside the task at hand to have some fun. He was supposed to take me home. I tried yelling at him, but no sound escaped my mouth. I was voiceless. But finally, after watching commercial after commercial after commercial, he turned and looked at me, as if suddenly remembering why he came to the hospital in the first place. Wordlessly, he walked over, helped me into the wheelchair, and pushed me out into the cold night air.

I had many more dreams while I was in the coma — dreams of Harry Potter, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Family Feud. But these early dreams — at least I think they were my early dreams — are the most vibrant to me. Unlike the other ones, they weren’t muted or gray. There was action, movement, rhythm. It may have been that these dreams weren’t dreams at all — but a delirium I experienced as they lowered my sedation and gently woke me up from my coma. Maybe Coffee Guy and Toyota Lady showed up because the nurses kept the gigantic television on in my room so I stayed connected to the land of the non-comatose. Maybe the flight attendant, the taxi driver, and Vik were the nurses, technicians, housekeeping staff, doctors, and therapists who cared for me every hour, every day. I don’t know for sure and never will. But I do know that in every “dream” I had I was trying to get out of something — leave a room, pass a test, exit a plane. In every dream, I was trying to get home.