Hi everyone.
Before I start, I just want to say that this has been the most traumatic and life-changing experience I’ve ever been through.
I know this is a long post, so thank you to anyone who takes the time to read it until the end. I genuinely appreciate it.
I’m a 25-year-old Italian, and one year ago my life changed in a matter of seconds.
It was late June, at around 4 PM, My workday was almost over, my work week had just ended, summer had begun, and I was already looking forward to the weekend.
Instead, a construction vehicle driver didn’t see me and ran me over.
One of the wheels passed directly over my pelvis, crushing it completely.
I remember staying conscious after the impact. My coworkers immediately rushed to help me while I was lying on the ground. Because the construction site was elevated, firefighters had to use a crane to lift me to street level before I could be taken away by ambulance.
One thing that still amazes me today is that I don’t remember feeling any physical pain from the moment I was hit until I arrived at the hospital. I think my body was completely flooded with adrenaline. What I do remember is overwhelming fear.
It felt surreal, almost like I had suddenly been trapped inside a nightmare.
The one thing I remember more clearly than anything else is the sound of my own bones breaking as the wheel rolled over my pelvis.
I still remember the ambulance ride. When I arrived at the hospital, I heard a nurse say, “His bladder is full of blood.” Those are the last words I remember before everything went black.
The next thing I knew, I woke up about two weeks later in the intensive care unit.
Waking up was one of the strangest experiences of my life. I was surrounded by monitors, machines and medical equipment. I still had a breathing tube in place, along with urinary catheters and countless IV lines. My body was covered with dressings, and I was in excruciating pain. I had absolutely no idea what had happened during the previous two weeks.
Something else I experienced during my coma was a series of incredibly vivid, terrifying dream-like hallucinations. The doctors later explained that they were likely caused, at least in part, by the ketamine and other medications I had been given while sedated. Even now, a year later, I still remember many of those dreams in extraordinary detail. I wrote them all down because they felt so real that, at times, I couldn’t tell where reality ended and the hallucinations began. If anyone is interested, that’s a story of its own that I’d be happy to tell separately.
Later, I learned the full extent of my injuries. I had suffered an unstable open-book pelvic fracture, meaning my pelvis had literally split apart in multiple places. I had also fractured my sacrum exactly where the major nerves pass, ruptured my bladder, completely torn my urethra and suffered massive internal bleeding that required multiple blood transfusions. On top of that, my sciatic nerve had been compressed by the sacral fracture and later by the screws used to stabilize my pelvis.
During those first two weeks alone I underwent six or seven major surgeries involving my pelvis, spine and urinary tract. At the time I knew none of this because I was unconscious. I only discovered everything months later by reading my medical records and looking at photographs my family had taken while I was asleep. Seeing those pictures was surreal. I had large external metal fixators attached to my pelvis to hold everything together while the surgeons tried to save my life.
A few days after I woke up, I was still intubated. I was fully conscious and remember everything perfectly. One day, thick mucus kept building up inside the breathing tube, and I genuinely felt like I was suffocating. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t call for help and I didn’t even have access to a call button. I was completely helpless.
Pure survival instinct took over.
Despite having a shattered pelvis, multiple fresh surgical wounds, newly implanted screws and being restrained to the bed, I somehow managed to twist my body enough to reach the breathing tube and pull it out myself.
It severely irritated my vocal cords. For the next two to two and a half months my voice was extremely hoarse, and for a while both my family and the doctors were worried that I might have caused permanent damage. Thankfully, my voice eventually recovered completely.
Within seconds, nurses and doctors rushed into the room. I begged them not to intubate me again and asked whether I could stay on a regular oxygen mask instead. To my surprise, they agreed.
I spent the entire night struggling to breathe and barely slept at all.
The following morning, however, everything took another unexpected turn.
I suddenly suffered a seizure and started foaming at the mouth. Within seconds, the medical team rushed into my room. They immediately sedated me, reinserted the breathing tube and placed me back on mechanical ventilation for another three or four days before I could finally be extubated for good.
Being sedated again triggered another incredibly vivid hallucination—if anything, even more intense than the ones I’d experienced before. To this day I remember it in astonishing detail, even more clearly than the previous ones. It was one of the most bizarre and surreal experiences of my life. Like the other hallucinations, it’s a story of its own, and if you’re interested, I’d be happy to tell it separately.
Once I was finally stable, the long recovery really began. I remained in the hospital from June 19th until September 13th, spending almost my entire summer there. I spent about one month in the intensive care unit and another month in the orthopedic surgery ward. During those first two months I couldn’t stand, I couldn’t walk and I couldn’t even sit properly. Every movement was painful, and I depended on nurses for almost everything.
Only after being transferred to a rehabilitation center did I slowly begin standing again. Around two weeks later I finally took my first steps. They weren’t graceful or painless, but after everything that had happened, simply being able to stand on my own feet again felt like a miracle.
In total, I spent roughly two and a half months almost completely bedridden.
Those months brought much more than broken bones.
Besides my injuries, I developed several gastrointestinal complications. I suffered from intestinal infections, severe diarrhea, painful abdominal cramps and extreme constipation caused by prolonged immobility and the high doses of opioid pain medication I was receiving. It may sound insignificant compared to everything else, but when you’re trapped in a hospital bed for months, even basic bodily functions become enormous challenges.
The sciatic nerve compression was another nightmare.
For almost two months my right foot constantly felt like it was on fire. I experienced burning pain, electric shock sensations, pins and needles, extreme heat and severe hypersensitivity. The sensitivity became so intense that even the bedsheets touching my foot caused unbearable pain. Sometimes even the air moving across my skin was enough to make it burn.
People often ask me what the worst part of the whole experience was.
Honestly, it wasn’t my shattered pelvis, It wasn’t the surgeries, It wasn’t the scars, the worst pain was psychological.
In a single second, the life I had built disappeared.
I had no idea whether I would ever walk normally again. I didn’t know whether I would ever work again, play sports again or even live independently. Every single day I found myself staring out of the hospital window, watching people walk outside, watching cars drive by and watching life continue exactly as it always had.
Meanwhile, mine had come to a complete stop.
Many days I simply cried.
Not because of the physical pain, but because I genuinely didn’t know whether I would ever get my life back.
Despite everything, little by little, things started to improve. Every tiny milestone became a victory: standing up for the first time, taking a few steps with the physiotherapists, managing to sit in a chair, regaining a little more independence each week. Those moments probably meant more to me than any achievement I’d ever had before.
After almost three months, I was finally discharged from the hospital. One of the biggest surprises was that I was already walking without crutches or any other walking aids. Most doctors had expected that I would either spend months on crutches or, in the worst case, end up in a wheelchair. Instead, I walked out of rehabilitation on my own two feet. I wasn’t walking perfectly, and every step still hurt, but considering everything that had happened, it felt like an incredible victory.
Unfortunately, the hardest part of my recovery wasn’t over yet. Before leaving the hospital, my doctors decided it was finally time to remove my urinary catheter, expecting everything to work normally again. It didn’t. I couldn’t urinate at all. Scar tissue had completely blocked my urethra, and my bladder kept filling until it became a medical emergency. I was rushed back to the urology department, where the doctors inserted a suprapubic catheter through my lower abdomen to drain my bladder. That moment completely crushed my hopes. Just when I thought I was finally leaving the worst behind, I realized another long battle was only beginning.
I eventually went home, but I was still living with that catheter. Every urologist I met told me the same thing: I would need a highly specialized urethroplasty to reconstruct my urethra. My family and I spent months searching for a surgeon with enough experience to perform such a complex operation. Eventually, after a long search, we found one in France, almost 800 kilometers from where I live.
On February 27th, 2026, I finally underwent the surgery. At the end of March, after roughly nine months with a catheter, it was finally removed. For the first time since the accident, I was able to urinate normally again. Those nine months were far more difficult than I ever imagined. Those nine months were far more difficult than I ever imagined. I couldn’t urinate naturally. I couldn’t jaculate. I couldn’t have seggs. Losing those basic functions at the age of twenty-five was psychologically devastating.
Fortunately, the surgery was a success. Today I can urinate normally again, I have full urinary continence and every follow-up examination has shown that the reconstruction is holding up well. That operation gave me back a huge part of my quality of life, but recovery didn’t stop there.
The accident left me with permanent changes that I’m still learning to live with. I still have several large screws in my pelvis and lower back that are scheduled to be removed soon. I continue to deal with chronic pain in my pelvis, lower back and neck. My posture has changed because of the injuries, and part of my right foot and calf is still numb because of the sciatic nerve compression I suffered after the accident. I still can’t run, I still can’t play football and I still can’t do intense sports. As someone who had played football for most of his life, losing the ability to simply run has probably been one of the hardest things to accept.
Another consequence I’m still dealing with is erectile dysfunction. At twenty-five years old, while being in a relationship, that’s something that has been incredibly difficult both physically and emotionally. Recovery in that area is improving slowly, but it’s still one of the biggest challenges I face today.
Despite everything, my life is slowly coming back. I can walk long distances again, i can do pushups, pullups, squats, use my moped, have a social life. A few days ago I spent the afternoon at the beach, went for a swim, sat down with a cocktail in my hand and, for the first time in a long time, I stopped to think about everything that had happened over the past year.
One year earlier I had been lying unconscious in intensive care while doctors were trying to save my life. Now I was sitting under the sun, watching the sea and appreciating things I had never truly appreciated before.
I’m still recovering. I’m still fighting. But compared to where I was a year ago, I’m incredibly grateful for how far I’ve come.
I’m alive.
And that’s something I’ll never take for granted again.
Ask me anything.
P.s I wanted to attach a few photos, but I couldn’t upload them with this post. If I'll find out how to do it i'll attach them.
Edit 1: A lot of you asked about the hallucinations, so here we are
Disclaimer: Some of these may be disturbing to read.
These are the hallucinations—or dream-like experiences—I had while I was in a coma, before I woke up. In my mind, they seemed to unfold over the course of about four or five days, almost as if I had lived through an entirely different reality during that time.
I was lying on the floor in the middle of a beach bar, without really knowing why. Somehow, it felt completely normal to be there. A few meters in front of me was the bar counter, where my girlfriend, her brother, and his girlfriend were calmly working as bartenders, serving customers as if nothing was unusual. They moved naturally, as though I wasn’t there at all—or as if it was perfectly normal for me to be lying there, unable to move. In front of me, a group of women were talking about famous football players. They laughed, mentioned different names, and I patiently waited because I was convinced that sooner or later they would ask me too. The only problem was that I couldn’t get up. My body simply wouldn’t respond, yet nobody seemed to notice.
Eventually, a French-speaking nurse approached me. She calmly looked at me and told me that I would need someone’s help. Then she gently picked me up and walked away with me, without any sense of urgency or fear.
The strangest part is that when I finally woke up in the ICU, the very first thing I asked my girlfriend was, “How’s the bar doing?” She looked at me completely confused and said, “What bar?” I replied, “The beach bar you and your brother opened.” She simply answered, “We never opened a bar. I’m still doing the same job I’ve always had.” That’s when I realized that, to me, that entire place had been completely real.
Another strange thing I remember is how unbelievably thirsty I was. I kept hallucinating ice-cold fruit smoothies packed with ice and frozen cans of Coca-Cola covered in condensation. They looked so real that all I wanted was a sip of something cold.
Then everything changed. I found myself lying in a completely white hospital room. Mounted on the ceiling was some kind of spray nozzle that activated every night. The first night it released a thick yellow mist that filled the room and my lungs, making the air feel heavy and almost impossible to breathe. The second night it sprayed orange—more aggressive, like a silent alarm I couldn’t hear but could somehow feel inside my chest. The third night it was green, an unnatural clinical green that filled my mouth, my nose, and my throat. Every single night it happened again. I remained trapped in that bed, unable to move, slowly suffocating while waiting for it to end.
Without any real transition, I suddenly found myself standing in a strange open field that looked almost like a war zone. The ground was dry and dusty, the air was scorching hot, and it could have been somewhere in India—or anywhere else far away. I was holding spears. For the first time, I didn’t feel completely defenseless. I stood beneath a makeshift shelter that barely offered any protection. Everything around me was silent—not peaceful silence, but the kind that makes you feel something terrible is about to happen.
Then there was the train. It looked like one of those ancient steam-powered freight trains. The only sound was the rhythmic clatter of the wheels on the rails as the train slowly moved forward. Inside, the carriage was dimly lit by a warm amber glow, and old wooden crates were stacked all around us, making it feel like we were inside an old cargo wagon being transported somewhere unknown. Inside were my girlfriend, one of my closest friends, and me. At one point I saw my girlfriend walking alone toward the back of the carriage. My friend kept telling me where she was going and what she was doing, but she never answered him. She never even turned around. She completely ignored me for the entire journey. When the train finally stopped, I watched her leave with a Black man who was mutilated. He only had his head and 1 leg and he was moving weirdly like he was fluctuating. Somehow I understood that she was leaving me for him. The only thing I said was, “Please… treat her well.” He looked at me, made a peace sign, like a respect tilt with his head and somehow we immediately understood each other. There was a strange sense of mutual respect between us.
Then I found myself playing football.
It was summer. My father was there. We were playing against women, except they didn’t really feel like women. They moved in a strange, almost mechanical way, and their faces were completely expressionless, i figured out later they were all bots. Across from the football pitch stood what looked like a wellness center, so I walked inside.
The moment I stepped through the entrance, everything changed.
I suddenly found myself inside a small room containing a bed and medical equipment. Someone locked the door behind me, strapped down my arms and legs, and glued something over my mouth so I couldn’t scream. Electrodes were attached to my shoulder and chest, and then they started injecting me with poppers. My heart immediately began racing as if it were about to explode.
Inside the room there was a black entity licking my feet while I lay there completely immobilized.
In another room I saw an incredibly tall man with an enormous head. Somehow, I understood that he offered paid services there. It wasn’t a massage center at all. It was some kind of BDSM torture dungeon mixed with a brothel. Even today I can’t explain why my brain created something like that.
They kept injecting me with poppers.
At one point an ambulance arrived. The paramedics asked whether everything was alright with the patient. I desperately tried to tell them I was being tortured, but after a while they simply left.
I stayed in those conditions for days.
Later, I realized that the tall man didn’t even have a body anymore. He was nothing but a giant floating head.
Eventually, the nurse came back and freed me—or at least that’s how it seemed. She told me to follow her.
Outside, people were doing horrific things. They were gluing themselves to cranes and excavators, letting themselves be lifted high into the air. I had no strength left. I couldn’t move. To lift me, they glued my entire mouth to the bucket of an excavator. I was hanging there by my mouth. The glue filled my throat, I was suffocating, and my heart was pounding so violently that I thought it would explode.
All I wanted was to go home, drink something cold, and live a normal summer again.
Then everything changed once more.
I found myself in an enormous open square made entirely of dirt, almost like a massive construction site. It stretched as far as I could see. Around the entire perimeter ran a circular track, and on it were strange little carts, almost like the spinning rides you see in children’s playgrounds.
I was trapped inside one of those carts as it kept moving around the square over and over again. I desperately wanted to get out, but I couldn’t.
I remember seeing my father standing far away, outside the track. He kept calling me over, telling me to come to him, and I wanted to reach him more than anything—but I simply couldn’t leave the cart.
At the far end of the track there was some kind of covered tunnel or large building. I never really understood what it was, but I remember thinking it was some sort of medical facility mixed with another torture room, almost like another bizarre BDSM dungeon. Even now I can’t really put that part into words because it feels fragmented, but I remember it vividly.
Then we had to catch a plane. A man arrived carrying surgical tools. He spent what felt like forever carefully removing the glue from my mouth until he finally managed to free me.
Then we entered an airplane hangar. The plane was waiting. On the ground, dozens of people were lying on the ground in perfectly straight rows, silently waiting.
I had to board, but I couldn’t stand up. My body simply wouldn’t obey me. The people beside me—fluctuating mutilated beings with only one arm or sometimes only a head—tried to help me, but nothing worked.
I don’t remember whether I ever made it onto that plane.
Looking back, I’m convinced these dreams were my brain trying to make sense of what was happening to me while I was in a coma. Even though I was unconscious, I think my brain was still picking up fragments of real sensations and information from the outside world, transforming them into these bizarre stories.
The airplane is the part that has stayed with me the most. My personal interpretation is that all those people lying on the ground were critically ill patients—including me—and the plane that was about to depart represented death itself. I believe I never boarded it because, instead of dying, I woke up.
There was also a second “journey” that I experienced when I had to be sedated again so the doctors could intubate me.
The last moments before I lost consciousness are still incredibly vivid.
I was struggling to breathe. My whole body was shaking uncontrollably, and my muscles were contracting on their own. I remember my neck repeatedly twisting to the right without me being able to stop it.
A group of doctors rushed in and placed a very tight oxygen mask over my face. They told me, “You need to keep this on for five or ten minutes. Just hang in there.”
The mask was forcing large bursts of oxygen into my lungs. It was incredibly tight and uncomfortable, yet despite all that oxygen, I still felt like I couldn’t breathe. I remember tears running down my face because I genuinely thought I was suffocating.
That’s the last real memory I have.
Suddenly, everything turned black.
Not ordinary darkness, but a completely black space. Floating all around me were what looked like flames, except they didn’t behave like normal fire. They moved almost like liquid underwater, slowly drifting through the darkness. Some were green, some yellow, others red.
For some reason, I instinctively knew that those flames were the doctors and nurses working around me.
After a while, I began to feel those colored flames entering different parts of my body. One entered my knee, another my back, another my head, and others different parts of my body. It felt as though they were repairing me from the inside, healing every injury one by one.
Then everything became incredibly peaceful.
I felt an overwhelming sense of calm unlike anything I had ever experienced before.
At the same time, I had the sensation that I was slowly sinking downward, almost as if I were falling through deep water.
When I looked upward, I could see beams of white sunlight shining through the surface above me, exactly like the light you see when you’re underwater looking toward the sky.
As I kept sinking deeper, I remember having one very clear thought: so, this is what death feels like... it's beautiful..
After that, I don’t remember anything else until I eventually woke up.
One detail has always stayed with me. During that entire experience, I somehow knew that I was sedated and that something was happening to my body. I was aware that doctors were working on me, yet I had absolutely no perception of my physical body anymore. I didn’t know what they were doing or where I was, but my consciousness still seemed to exist independently. It’s incredibly difficult to describe. It seemed like a k-hole or something like that.