A comatose patient's surprising memory

Dr. Pim van Lommel personally verified another NDE account in a coronary care unit, which was recorded by the nurse caring for the patient.

“During the night shift the ambulance crew brings in a forty-four-year-old cyanotic [purplish-blue skin discoloration], comatose man. About an hour earlier he had been found in a public park by passers-by, who had initiated heart massage. After admission to the coronary care unit, he receives artificial respiration with a balloon and a mask as well as heart massage defibrillation.

“When I want to change the respiration method, when I want to intubate the patient, the patient turns out to have dentures in his mouth. Before intubating him, I remove the upper set of dentures and put it on the crash cart. Meanwhile we continue extensive resuscitation. After approximately ninety minutes, the patient has sufficient heart rhythm and blood pressure, but he’s still ventilated and intubated, and he remains comatose.

“In this state he is transferred to the intensive care unit for further treatment. After more than a week in coma the patient returns to the coronary care unit, and I see him when I distribute the medication.

“As soon as he sees me he says,” Oh, yes, but you, you know where my dentures are.

“I’m flabbergasted. Then he tells me,” Yes, you were there when they brought me into the hospital, and you took the dentures out of my mouth and put them on that cart; it had all these bottles on it, and there was a sliding drawer underneath, and you put my teeth there.

“I was all the more amazed because I remembered this happening when the man was in a deep coma and undergoing resuscitation.

“After further questioning, it turned out that the patient had seen himself lying in bed and that he had watched from above how nursing staff and doctors had been busy resuscitating him. He was also able to give an accurate and detailed description of the small room where he had been resuscitated and of the appearance of those present. While watching this scene, he had been terrified that we were going to stop resuscitating and that he would die.

“And it’s true that we had been extremely negative about the patient’s prognosis due to his poor condition when admitted. The patient tells me that he had been making desperate but unsuccessful attempts at letting us know he was still alive and that we should continue resuscitating. He’s deeply impressed by his experience and says he’s no longer afraid of death.”

 

Pim van Lommel, Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (HarperOne, 2010), 20-21. See Pim van Lommel et al., “Near-Death Experience in Survivors of Cardiac Arrest: A Prospective Study in the Netherlands,” Lancet 358 (2001): 2039-45.