One of my biggest fears is being comatose, paralyzed, or otherwise incapacitated in a way where my mind is active but my body is completely shut down. I know that there are plenty of people who have lived through conditions like this and a lot of them even went on to love rich and full lives. Power to them, I say, but it still scares me so much - I just can't imagine being trapped in my head without the ability to communicate with anyone else. It sounds genuinely terrifying and isn't something I'd wish for even my most hated enemy.

For a long time, it was believed that nothing conscious was really happening in the minds of coma patients, but that's not strictly true. It's true, some patients below describe it as essentially a blackout where one minute they were about to get injured and the next they woke up in a hospital bed. Others, however, describe having memories of life around them and nightmarish dreams as their brains tried to make sense of what was happening to them.