Finding Self, Sense, and Sense Making after a Cerebral Hemorrhage

This essay presents an analysis of a patient’s experiences after she had a sudden cerebral hemorrhage and was put into an artificial coma. Her husband, a sociologist, collected a wealth of different sorts of data during the many years of recovery. When the patient had recovered, they collaboratively reconstructed and analyzed what she had experienced. Phenomenological concepts proved helpful for interpreting the patient’s experiences at different stages such as her disorientation after awakening from the coma, the blurred borders between fact and fiction, her problems with time and space, her loss of smell, her oscillation between despair and overestimation of her capabilities in the rehabilitation clinic and her long way “back to normal”. The social context of family support is considered, and conclusions are drawn what sociologists can learn from this case.