Ten to Life

Delirium Tales of a Covid-19 Survivor

By: Mike Joyner

Narrated by: Tim Carper

A Covid-19 journey into the abyss, a recollecting of delirium, hallucinations from the far reaches of our minds created from what we consciously and subconsciously record of our five senses. Forty days were spent in four hospitals, from Syracuse, New York to Sayre, Pennsylvania. The author spent 18 days intubated, sedated in an induced coma. At 61-years-old, no significant health issues (although overweight,) a passionate outdoorsman, prior years as a runner/triathlete, suddenly found himself in the fight for his life. He was given a 10 percent chance of surviving it. He nearly succumbed to it.

In his latest book, the author strives to convey what is nearly impossible to adequately describe as to how much Covid delirium magnifies our most primitive basal emotions. It is nearly paralyzing when fear, anger, regret, sense of loss enters the hallucination.

"It is the recollecting of this journey during my induced coma that is most difficult, and emotionally painful.... To those I hope to reach, to the families that are mired in anguish as their loved ones suffer; I hope that my testimony and recollection of my experience provides some measure of hope, some comfort as we extend ourselves in solidarity. It is a bare and honest account of my Covid delirium. My perceived lifetimes jumped back and forth, yet I felt no disconnect. All of my senses were in play, and at no time while sedated did I question all that I experienced to be anything but real. Everything was in place no matter how fantastic or bizarre it may have appeared.... I will long remember the kindness, the prayers, and the critical medical/spiritual support during my darkest hours. It is my firm belief I was brought back from the edge, given a second chance to do, to complete whatever I am meant to do in this life. I can promise without reservation I’ll make good on it.” (Mike Joyner)

©2022 Michael E Joyner (P)2022 Michael E Joyner

What if you could not wake up just when your dream

Engineer Mike Joyner found out the answer during 18 days of medically induced coma, and has written an organized narrative of a very chaotic experience. It’s not your stereotypical NDE. Really, this is more a dream/coma book than a COVID book.

I can only compare the author’s coma dreams to what I would expect to get if one combined Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and Franz Kafka, then forced them through the filter of an engineer’s mind.

Unfortunately, while I don’t mind (and sometimes even enjoy) HP Lovecraft’s dream-based short stories, I personally have a strong distaste for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the Land of Oz, anything by Kafka, and while I very much like A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s court, I found Mark Twain’s/Samuel Clemens’ ambiguous “was it all a dream?” ending very dissatisfying (Mr. Joyner’s book here has a much more satisfying conclusion, though parts are every bit as dark as the other reviews mention).

So why did I give this book four stars? For the reason that I don’t want to penalize a book just because I don’t care for the subject matter (I wouldn’t give a 1-star rating to a textbook simply because I really don’t like reading textbooks, for example), and I think that with its target audience, 4- or maybe even some 5-star ratings are possible with this book. From a technical production perspective, I have no gripes. While he’s clearly coming at this from a technical writing background instead of a novelist’s, the author clearly knows how to write coherently and understandably (which is a must-have given the subject matter he is narrating), and while dreams have their own internal continuity, one expects them to be chaotic and full of non-sequiturs even in the absence of strong medication, so I think that’s an issue with the subject matter that I can’t see a way to fix.

Dreams are (obviously) a popular literary topic, and it turns out that multiple coma survivors have turned their internal experiences into books. I listened to this book in audio format, which I think in this case is the ideal way to experience it, and the author’s good call in producing an audiobook version is likely to make this one of the better-selling coma narratives.

I think dream enthusiasts, other people who have awakened from comas, and those with loved ones in comas are the most likely to appreciate this book (which, based on the preface, were clearly on the author’s mind that sharing his experiences with may help). If Mr. Joyner’s experiences are anything to go by, while things like bad smells, physical pain, and emotional anguish can certainly be intensely experienced in a coma state, they are infrequent, finite, and contextualized in the unique continuity of a dream. (They are also counterbalanced somewhat by enjoyments like good bourbon, 5-star meals, periods of sleep, and wild rides in a variety of pretty cool vehicles.) The rarest unpleasant sensation seems to have been boredom (only really mentioned a couple of times).

What you will NOT find in this book is any Freudian-type analysis (since I’m personally not a fan of that, I was glad of this absence), and only rare instances (about half a dozen notes) when the author compares this coma life to real-world events. I personally would have preferred more of those, almost like excerpts from his patient chart daily doctor’s notes timeline interspersed with the dream segments to his or other’s best estimate. For me, the best parts were the preface, the narrative of what got him into the coma, and the denouement of waking up, rebuilding his physical health and stamina, and introspecting about how the whole experience changed him.

Ten to Life

A blend of life experiences mixed in imagination with the authors current dose of reality all coming together into one film the author is forced to view, at times terrifying. Not able to wake from it being intubated and physically incapacitated. I am not a oneirologist but many things come to mind. Very thought provoking both scientifically and spiritually. Each episode well written.