Hallucinations

Karin:  I don't remember much from when I was in a coma but I do remember one thing from I think it was my third day.  I thought I was in a kind of experimental camp.  I knew I was restricted and unable to move for some reason and my family was all around me.  I knew it was some kind of medical place but it was almost as though it was experimental and we were in temporary facilities that were like camps.  Kind of like what you see on M.A.S.H. but there were a lot of high tech machines around me.  I felt like I was camping.

The second hallucination that I had was on the morning that I finally woke up.  It was early in the morning and they came in to do my daily x-rays.  I felt as though they took me into this basement somewhere and I was strapped to a bed and they were going to do weird experiments on me.  It was an Asian nurse and she was really mean to me.  I was very scared and trying to get away but she just kept torturing me.  The next thing I knew she put me on an elevator and left me in there alone.  When it went up then the door opened and my bed naturally rolled out of the elevator where I was left all alone.  I then started throwing up (that really happened) and I thought I was going to die.  It felt as though I was alone forever but it was probably only a few minutes because in ICU you are never alone for more than a few minutes.  It was then that I was fully coming off the drug and was greeted by a team of doctors who panicked at the thought that I might have inhaled my vomit (sorry for such a detailed description).   Other than these two times I really can't remember anything.

Linda:  I thought that someone threw a football in my room and it hit the oxygen tubing for the person next to me.  It was like I had to save the person next to me. For some reason I couldn't yell out for help. (I forgot I had a trach.)  I had these blue air bags going up each leg and I could barely sit up. But, I was determined, and I felt I had no choice but to get up.  I didn't know why I was lying there or that I could bear any weight let alone walk.

Well, I tore off the air bags then wiggled my self to the bottom of the bed after I realized there were bars on each side. At the time I wasn't even concerned about my own predicament--I just had to get that football and save someone else. Finally my feet touched the floor but something went wrong and I went down and hit my head against the night table. I thought for sure I was bleeding. Next thing I know there were three nurses above me asking me, what happened and how I got on the floor. All I kept trying to tell them (by mouthing the words) was “the football.” They looked at me and even chuckled a bit.

They somehow got me back into bed. I worried that they wouldn't be able to lift me up. I looked to the left of me where I had seen the football land on the oxygen tubing of the patient next to me. Well, there was no football or tubing--not even a patient there.  I was the only one in that room. I kept saying to myself it wasn't a dream--it really happened.

Luckily I just had a bump on my head. I still remember the time because shortly after, it was decided that my trach would be buttoned. There was talk about this procedure for a couple of days and it scared me because I had forgotten that I would be able to breathe through my nose.

So there I was--I had just fallen out of bed, got this bump on my head, it's 3:00 am and they are going to do it.

I can still picture the little speck on the ceiling I focused on while they did it.

Eileen:  I had these weird hallucinations when I got out of the coma and was in the midst of my psychosis. I imagined this whole scenario where my occupational therapist and my nurses came into my room via the wall that was connected to the outside of the hospital; no door there. And I thought there was a whole underground and secret passages that everyone in the hospital used--maybe because the lower level of the hospital was where they did the medical procedures and tests. But it was so much more complex than what the hospital actually has. And I imagined that my twin, who is also a lawyer, was now a med student working with these medical professionals--I wonder if I thought that because she was reading so many medical publications regarding ARDS and I heard her discussing all of it--and she, too, was entering my room through the wall.

And then they reintroduced my morphine and all of the weird hallucinations were gone.

Meg:  Instead of my hospital room being at Swedish Medical Center, it was on the ground floor of a building that also housed a preschool called "La Petite Ecolier."  (Those of you who have studied French will notice that the gender is incorrect, but this is exactly how I remember the name.)  Anyway, it was a rainy morning, about 6 AM, and lots of people were coming into the doors just outside my room.  I remember my ICU night nurse, Cindy, taking particular care to arrange the photos in my room.  Another nurse brought a toaster oven into my room.  It appeared that she was warming up teriyaki chicken wings.  Although no one said anything to me, I sort of figured out that some sort of big event was taking place just outside of my room.  At first I wondered if it had anything to do with me, since Cindy seemed to be taking so much time getting my room to look perfect.  I was even wondering if they were going to wheel me out in my bed.  But then I tried to get a glimpse of what was happening just outside my room and I thought I saw a wedding cake.  So I put two and two together, and determined that a wedding was taking place in the room next to mine at 6 in the morning, Cindy was the wedding vocalist (in her blue scrubs no less) and they were warming up the food for the reception in my room.  And then just like that, everything was back to normal.  I must admit I was rather disappointed that there wasn't more excitement in my room on that rainy morning in Seattle.