While recovering from a car crash, LORCAN LEAVYexperienced terrifying paranoia, delirium and hallucinations
APPROACHING THE slipway from the new bypass onto the old road . . . a sharp turn . . . change down the gears. A lorry approaching, a big lorry, negotiating the other half of the dog-leg shaped slipway.
We both straighten up, driving towards each other . . . and then it happens . . . the trailer jack-knifes, swinging over into my half of the road. Steer to the left to avoid impact. Too late . . . bang!
Darkness . . . stars.
In Castlebar hospital, a decision was made to attempt to save my arm even though it had initially appeared to be beyond saving. And in the process of doing this my blood pressure went so low that saving my life became the priority.
I was moved to Galway for further orthopaedic and plastic surgery.
During the early part of my induced coma I had benign dreams – that my mother was there, stroking my blood-soaked hair, that my brother was there, and also my children, and children they appeared to be even though they are now all adults.
I dreamed, with total clarity, that I was put on board a military plane and flown to Moscow for surgery and then flown back to Galway. It took quite a lot of time and effort on the part of my family to convince me that this, in particular, hadn’t happened.
But then I entered into a phase where the dreams were no longer benign. As I drifted into a state of deep unconsciousness and then on to fretful wakefulness and all the stages in between, I experienced depths of dementia and paranoia that were terrifying in their intensity.
In my deep unconscious state I imagined myself to be in a huge cave-like place, the darkness of the concave roof relieved by myriad images of grotesque faces and people who leered and sneered at my helplessness and distress.
These images changed incessantly as they flitted across the darkened sky over my head, always ugly and full of threat. In the background I could hear a constant flow of shrieking music, screaming away in an endless rondo.
And far below all this mayhem was a surging flood of multicoloured viscous evil-smelling liquid through which I had to swim, sometimes submerged and gasping for breath, other times swimming on the surface, but never able to rest, always struggling, always gasping.
My broken ribs and collapsed lung, I’m sure, were at the root of my breathing difficulties. But what about all the rest? Was I dead, I asked myself. Was this hell?
Had I sinned once too often and was this all I had earned? And would it ever end? Was this to go on for eternity?
Over the next eight or nine days I was kept under sedation. I may have regained consciousness from time to time because I have some memories of people coming and going.
Each time I returned to near consciousness, my fevered mind took the realities that I could vaguely see around me, and created another version of hell. My mind concocted an elaborate scenario in which the hospital and all the staff were not real, rather they were clones created by a mastermind nurse who, for reasons unclear, had decided that I would never escape from this surreal, virtual world.
In my paranoia, I regarded all the staff as the enemy and I treated them with great suspicion.
Apart from the dementia of deep unconsciousness and the paranoia of near consciousness, a third scenario added to my torment: hallucinations. I saw things and people who weren’t there.
There were cars parked outside the glass door of the room – even though we were on the third floor of the building.
Even the glass door didn’t exist. The walls appeared not to be solid. They were made of white translucent gauze-like material behind which I could see sinister figures moving menacingly.
One of these was a ferocious looking Samurai character in full armour and carrying a double bladed axe. And most frightening of all, my room and indeed myself had come to the attention of a drunken lout with a head of wild hair and a shaggy beard, who wore a scruffy cowboy suit complete with Stetson hat and high boots.
This man, it appeared to me, hung around outside my non-existent glass door, peering in and even trying to push his way into the room. When two nurses went out to usher him away I saw him attack them repeatedly with a pickaxe handle until they were both unconscious and bloody.
Imagine my amazement and confusion when they both appeared at my bedside later on, looking neat and tidy in their uniforms.
As I began to regain consciousness I gradually became aware of the presence of the nurses and of my family. To my amazement I was told that they had been coming and going for the past week or more.
My wife hadn’t left my side most of that time. I tried to tell her about the imagined plot to keep me captive in the hospital. I said goodbye to her and told her that she must leave for fear that they would try to entrap her as well.
My awareness of the presence of people, real people, came and went as I slipped back into the surreal world of horror.
By opening and closing my eyes I drifted from the world of dementia into the world of paranoia and back again. I noticed that when I closed my eyes it took about 10 seconds for the demons to appear – the same when I opened my eyes.
So by closing my eyes and counting to nine and then opening them and again counting to nine, I managed to fool the madness and to get some vestige of peace and rest.
This device and my wife’s voice gradually convinced me that I could survive after all.
I nagged my wife to “keep talking” because when she stopped the horrors resumed again.
During one particularly traumatic 48-hour period about 10 days after my accident I became very distressed and depressed. I pulled out all the tubes to which I was attached, totally heedless of the consequences.
During this time I had had no sleep, and then, quite suddenly, it all ended. I asked the nurse what time it was. She said it was midnight. What appeared like minutes later she came into the room again and I asked her the same question. “Three o’clock,” she said. I realised that I had slept soundly and without nightmares for three hours and I felt marvellous.
“Is there any chance that I could have tea and toast for breakfast?” I asked the astonished nurse. “I will get it for you myself before I go off duty at seven,” she said. And true to her word she did.
My recovery has been very good since then even though I did need further surgery on my arm.
My experience of delirium, hallucinations and paranoia, I have since learned, is a relatively common one for people in very stressful and traumatic situations which require a heavy drug regime.
It is known as ICU syndrome or ICU psychosis, a condition which manifests itself in any or all of the experiences that I went through.
While it undoubtedly was the most terrifying experience of my life, I now know that it does pass and has to be seen as a small price to pay for the intensive care treatment which, in fact, saved my arm and even saved my life.
Lorcan Leavy is a retired schoolteacher living in Charlestown, Co Mayo
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