Surviving a Coma: 5 Things No One Tells You About Recovery

Three and a half weeks.

That's approximately how long I spent in a coma after a near-fatal medical crisis.

I don't remember those weeks. My family does.

When I finally woke up, I had survived—but survival wasn't the end of the story.

In many ways, it was the beginning of another one.

Before this happened to me, I probably imagined waking from a coma the way many people do: you open your eyes, recognize everyone around you, and eventually go home.

My experience taught me how different reality can be.

Recovery was physical, emotional, frustrating, humbling, and much longer than I ever could have imagined.

Here are five things I learned about surviving a coma and rebuilding a life afterward.

1. Waking Up Isn't the Finish Line

People understandably celebrate when someone wakes from a coma.

They should.

Being alive is something worth celebrating.

But waking up doesn't necessarily mean everything is suddenly okay.

My body had been through tremendous trauma.

I had been unconscious for approximately three and a half weeks, and the person who woke up wasn't physically the same person who had gone into that hospital.

There was an enormous amount of work ahead.

That's one of the biggest misconceptions I had about recovery.

Survival and recovery are two different things.

Survival gave me another chance.

Recovery was what I had to do with it.

2. You May Have to Learn Your Body All Over Again

Before my medical crisis, I didn't think much about the ordinary physical things I did every day.

You simply get up.

You walk.

You use your hands.

You take care of yourself.

Then suddenly those ordinary things weren't ordinary anymore.

My left side had been severely affected, and I faced significant physical limitations after waking.

Eventually, I spent about eight weeks in rehabilitation at the VA.

Rehabilitation taught me how much we take our bodies for granted until something stops working the way it once did.

Progress could be measured in things that would have seemed insignificant before.

A movement.

A task.

Another step toward independence.

Recovery required patience I didn't know I had.

It also required accepting help, which wasn't always easy for someone accustomed to taking care of himself.

3. Your Family Has Been Through Something Too

This is something I understand much better today.

While I was unconscious, I wasn't experiencing those three and a half weeks the way my family was.

My mother became concerned when she couldn't reach me.

My daughter Cynthia and my former brother-in-law Steve went looking for me.

They found me unresponsive.

Cynthia called 911.

Then my family had to live through the uncertainty that followed.

I don't remember lying there unconscious.

They remember waiting.

That's an important difference.

When someone survives a major medical crisis, attention naturally focuses on the patient.

But the people who love that person may also be carrying fear, exhaustion, uncertainty, and memories the patient doesn't have.

Recovery can involve an entire family.

I survived the crisis physically.

My family experienced it in another way.

Understanding that became part of my recovery too.

4. Recovery Means Learning to Trust Yourself Again

My medical crisis didn't happen in isolation.

Before it came pain, prescription medications, escalating use, dependence, warning signs, and choices I wish I had made differently.

Afterward, I had to confront those things.

That meant learning to become a more active participant in my healthcare.

Ask questions.

Understand what you're taking and why.

Tell your healthcare professionals honestly what you're experiencing.

Keep track of medications.

Speak up when something doesn't seem right.

Get appropriate professional help when you need it.

But accountability mattered too.

I couldn't spend the rest of my life looking only at what other people could have done differently.

I also had to examine my own decisions.

Recovery required both awareness and responsibility.

That lesson has stayed with me.

5. A Second Chance Doesn't Give You Your Old Life Back

This may have been the hardest lesson.

I survived.

But that didn't mean everything went back to exactly the way it was before.

Some physical effects remained.

There were wounds and medical complications.

There were limitations I had to learn to live with.

There were things I had to do differently.

For a while, it's easy to measure recovery against the person you used to be.

Can I do what I did before?

Am I as strong as I was?

Why isn't this working the way it used to?

Eventually, I began looking at recovery differently.

Instead of constantly asking whether I could get my old life back, I began figuring out what kind of life I could build now.

That shift mattered.

A changed life can still be a good life.

The Tiny Pulse That Changed Everything

There's one detail from the night I nearly died that has become central to the way I understand my second chance.

At one point, there was only a tiny sign of life—a faint pulse detected in my right foot.

That's not something I remember experiencing.

It's something I later learned about.

But think about what it represents.

Almost nothing.

And yet, not nothing.

There was still life.

Today that tiny pulse symbolizes something much larger to me.

Sometimes you don't need to see the entire road ahead.

Sometimes you just need enough to take the next step.

Faith Became Part of My Recovery

I can't talk honestly about my recovery without talking about faith.

I don't claim to know exactly why I survived.

I don't know why I was given another chance when others facing serious medical crises aren't.

But I believe my survival had meaning.

Faith didn't replace medical care.

It didn't do my rehabilitation for me.

It didn't remove the physical consequences of what happened.

What faith gave me was another reason to keep moving forward.

It helped change the question from:

“Why did this happen?”

to:

“What am I going to do with the life I still have?”

That became a much more important question.

Recovery Doesn't Follow a Schedule

People naturally want to know:

How long does recovery take?

My experience taught me that there isn't one simple answer.

Some progress happened during rehabilitation.

Other challenges lasted much longer.

Certain things improved.

Other changes became part of the life I had to adapt to.

Recovery wasn't a straight line from sick to healthy.

It was a process.

Even years later, what happened remains part of my life.

But it doesn't control the entire story.

Why I Wrote Almost Gone

I wrote Almost Gone: A True Story of Survival, Coma, and a Second Chance because eventually I realized there might be value in telling the whole story.

Not simply the coma.

Not simply prescription medication dependence.

And not simply the recovery.

I wanted readers to understand the person who existed before all of that too.

My Kentucky childhood.

My family.

My years in the Navy.

Work.

Business.

Fatherhood.

Mistakes.

Successes.

Pain.

Dependence.

The crisis.

The coma.

Rehabilitation.

Faith.

And the life that followed.

Because nobody is only the worst thing that ever happened to them.

What Surviving a Coma Taught Me

If I had to reduce everything I've learned to a few lessons, they would be these:

Don't take ordinary days for granted.

Accept help when you need it.

Ask questions about your healthcare.

Take responsibility for the choices that belong to you.

Don't assume a changed life is a finished life.

And perhaps most importantly:

Being given another chance means deciding what you're going to do with it.

I was almost gone.

There was a tiny pulse.

Then there was another day.

And eventually there was an entire life I didn't know I would get to live.

I'm still living it.

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