Delusions

[Kay]

I have decided to put this topic here because I only really had delusions with my more recent NASAH (as apposed to the SAH I had back in March last year).

 

I have noticed there is no topic dedicated to this subject and yet delusions are frequently experienced by both SAH and NASAH due to the strong medication we are put on and the blood both irritating the brain and preventing short term memories from being formed therefore creating confusion for most people.

 

I though this could also be useful for friends and family of those suffering from delusions, to assure them that this isn't unusual, because it can be very confusing and upsetting for everyone involved

[Kay]

Some of this is unaltered extracts from my diary at the time, some of the passages I’ve expanded upon (these shall be in Italics)

 

Ok, so the idea of doing this came to me on the night of Saturday 6th of January at 00:10. I’ve been trying to sleep for the past couple of hours, but all that’s been going through my head is how many people must have gone through these surreal experiences as well, how much of this must be undocumented, and just sound downright absurd to most people, and yet if I’ve been through this so many other people must have as well. subarachnoid haemorrhages (SAH) seem to be more common than ever and yet many people know relatively little about them.

 

I’ve read relatively little on the delusions experienced by people who have had a subarachnoid haemorrhage (until recently when a few kind members shared their experiences with me) and that is what I feel I want to focus on. The bloods irritation of the brain is a major thing that causes all sorts of confusion.  I genuinely believed I was being shipped about on a specially adapted ship for a while from Paris back to England every few days. I became really worried during one of these trips that we were going to get boarded by pirates, for the advanced technology aboard the ship.

 

One night I got really cold, and it occurred to me of course its cold we are currently on the open seas. I believed this all so much that I kept getting the nurses to ring Joe (my fiancé) because I was missing him so much in these days that I was apparently out of the country, despite the fact he came and saw me every single day (every time the nurses rang Joe they asked him what country he was in). It was at this point that Joe got me the diary, which starts on Christmas day; he then wrote down every day what we talked about and if anything significant happened in order to help jog my memory, the diary was mainly for me to look through to check if anyone had been that day, it really helped.

 

At one point I genuinely thought I’d been time traveling (hence the pirates, which were the genuine swashbuckling kind) I kept getting very confused about when I was. I believe this was mainly due to constantly being asked my date of birth and then being asked what the current date was.

 

Another major delusion I suffered from for a couple of days was that I had agreed to be part of an experiment to give birth to some kind of hybrid chicken (or possibly donkey animal, I remember not being able to get a clear answer on this at the time), I got really upset about this one because it occurred to me that whatever it was, it was clearly not going to be Joe’s child and maybe I shouldn’t have agreed to do this. I know now that during this time I was extremely bloated, which I think only added to the delusion.

 

This is all going to end up sounding absurdly surreal; like some Disney/Dali experiment, but it is all genuinely what I thought was happening at the time. I’m going to make an effort to be as unflinchingly honest as possible, no matter what, no matter how crazy it sounds. I believe I owe that to the others who have been through the same things as well, there must be other people out there who had similar experiences and don’t know how to talk about them to other people, so this is for you.

 

[Kay]

I was getting genuinely distressed at my mum because I believed the nurses at the hospital were lying to her about what was really happening, and I didn’t want her to believe there lies (I can’t remember what the lies were now).

 

She told me that she wouldn’t believe anything she was told unless I told her it was true, that she’d just pretend to believe them, but she’d know the truth, and that genuinely made me feel so happy and so relieved and so relaxed, I just needed someone to believe me.

 

I‘d just like to point out that all the staff at Queens Hospital Romford are superb and that I now understand that none of them were ever lying to me or my family. It was just my personal delusions brought on by a combination of the strong medication and bleeds.

 

I may never fully realise what I want to achieve through writing all this, but I’m going to give it a go anyway, and that’s all I can really ask of myself, something that can hopefully help other people and their families understand themselves and these experiences a little better, to let other people know that they are not alone in having these delusions.

 

Obviously every ones experiences are going to be unique; my experiences may be so surreal because I happen to be heavily influenced by surrealism, yet again maybe not, maybe everyone’s delusions are truly weird.

 

One of my earliest delusions involved believing that the hospital were turning people into Disney characters, I think I thought this because of some of the noises other patients were making, they sounded like animals from Disney films (which was truly disturbing at the time).

 

I believe someone also wrote my name on my pillow, and I thought that was so they could identify who I was before I got changed. At this point I had a lot of tubes stuck to my face with pads, which I’m guessing I thought was some kind of plastic surgery, because apparently I would touch these things on my face and look really confused.  

 

Unfortunately this was followed by one of my slightly more disturbing delusions, I believe something had gone wrong with my transformation, the colour wasn’t quite right and so they decided they weren’t going to use me and I was to be aborted/disposed of.  

 

I must admit this delusion genuinely scared me at the time, I felt helpless, thankfully this one didn’t last too long and of course I now know it was all just a delusion, none of it was real.

 

I would be grateful if other people would like to share their delusions here as well, please feel free

[Tinaw]

Oh, the delusions! Thank you for bringing this up. I had so many in the early days in hospital, and it took me a while afterwards to sort out what was true and what was not. After the SAH they kept me in an induced coma for a few days, trying to decide what to do, as my aneurysms were apparently very risky to coil. During this time, and a few days after waking up,  I was often in another world.

 

I genuinely believed that my husband, while I was in hospital, had redecorated our entire house to look exactly like the hospital ward I was in, with screens everywhere, hospital beds etc. I also remember him saying that he did this to be able to take care of me better when I got home... I remember being angry with him for doing this, as I believed he had spent a lot of money making these changes to our house which I felt were completely unnecessary.

 

Also, before I had my SAH we bought a cat, and he was frequently in my delusions. When I closed my eyes I saw him, and a few identical cats walking past - and this was really every time I closed my eyes. I believed that my family had bought four more (identical) cats while I was in hospital, without telling me. I was upset about this, too. I remember the relief I felt when the cats eventually disappeared. (Except for the real cat, he's still with us, helping with my rehab by being lovely).

 

Then there were many delusions about what happened in the hospital, and these I still don't know if they are in some part real or not. It was like being in an episode of "Grey's Anatomy", with the brain surgeons being envious of each other and stealing procedures from one another and such things. (I do hope that was not true, but didn't dare to ask the hospital staff :)). I could go on and on...it took a while before I dared to ask my husband if he actually had made the changes to our house, and if he had bought four more cats. 

[Kay]

I'm so glad you decided to share this. The whole reason I started this topic was my partner came on here trying to find out about the delusions, because he was getting very worried about the ones I was having (even though at the time I didn't tell him half of what was going on in my head) hopefully this will help other people to share their experiences as well. Thank you

[subzero]

Hello Kay ..... if you search `delusions`  on the home page you will find some more posts on the subject.

 

Mrs Subs was not affected in this way.

 

 

Subs.

[Kay]

I've noticed every now and then people mention some delusions within other topics,  but I couldn't find a topic dedicated to it. Hopefully these people will repost these incidents here so people can find this information more easily, as I mentioned Joe found it difficult finding anything out about delusions from the site. 

 

I too had no delusions with my original SAH. It was only with my second NASAH that I had all my delusions, which I'm still really surprised by, I'd have thought it would be the other way round. I don't know if maybe because I'd already had a SAH if I was put on stronger medication and that is the reason why for the delusions. 

[Chelle C]

I suffered with delusions when I had my SAH, I believed that the nurses were trying to poison me with my medication.

It was so real to me that at about 4am one morning I called my sister and asked her to come and get me out of hospital.

I can remember her telling me the medication was to make me better, she said she couldn't come so I hung up on her.

 

I then called my partner and told him the same thing and asked him to come and get me, he said even if he wanted to he couldn't, I had to stay there as it was the best place for me. I was convinced that they were both involved in having me poisoned. I never ate any hospital food for 10 days because I was sure they were putting poison in it.

 

I can remember telling the nurses that I knew what they were doing, they actually got someone to come and talk to me. That`s when I was told that everything that was happening to me was because of all the blood that was covering my brain, although it all seemed very real to me, it wasn't  real and it would pass.  It did eventually and on the day of my discharge

from hospital I was apologising to the nurses for accusing them, they were fantastic about it all, I suppose they see a lot of it.

 

Michelle xx

[Super Mario]

Chelle, snap, I was also convinced I was being poisoned according to my family, I can't remember any of it. Weird tricks your brain plays on you when it is under attack.

[Winb143]

I dreamt Nurses hurt my head and some beat me up ha ha.  My Bed had a space down the side and I had a seizure must have fallen out of bed and they were trying to get me into bed, but to me they had jumped me lol.

 

I know I definitely didn't like the OT's as they told my hubby to put me in a home as I would never be the woman I once was. !! 

 

Every time they came to see me I cried and would not do as they said.  Told you we are hard work lol xx

 

Good luck all delusionists  if there is such a word ha ha  xxxx

 

 

[frmertd]

i was having a lot of beliefs my wife was cheating on me. I think thats not the case now. (but you never know!) That was my delusion.

[ClareM]

I believed I was sharing a ward with one of the drug addict patients I dealt with at work. I even sent text messages to his pharmacist to tell her he was in Hospital! It was all totally untrue- no idea where the idea came from. 

 

I also told everyone Barak Obama had been to visit me which gave everyone a laugh. 

 

I have lots of other memory flashes like scenes from a film but all very disjointed. At one point I thought I was being nursed under my hospital bed. ?

 

Clare xx

 

 

[Chris G]

When I was in the hospital, I watched a football game on TV.  It seemed to me that every play was almost in slow motion.  I became convinced for a couple of days that I had a superpower to slow down time.  But, no such luck.