Between My Body and My "Dead Body": Narratives of Coma.
Qualitative Health Research January 1, 2016 Limor Meoded Danon
People who have been in comas describe their corporeal experiences in ways that challenge conventional boundaries of the body. Based on narrative research with seventeen participants from Israel who had experienced various coma states, three types of narrative protagonists emerged: "dead-alive," "rational," and "emissaries." Participants redefined bodily boundaries, particularly when recounting experiences they did not understand as corporeal, such as out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences, or being between the earthly and unearthly. Their difficulty finding words to convey these stories highlights the gap between experiencing and telling, crossing the medical establishment's normative discourse and revealing the ambiguous nature of human existence.