Worried about a family member, seeking some advice, guidance or other's experiences.

reply to post by jacktorrance


I'm sorry you and she are going through this. But just how sleep deprived is she? The reason I ask is that after I had my baby, who was sick and a poor sleeper, and a difficult recovery from a c-section and not enough support because my husband had to return to work right away, I ended up sleep deprived and my brain seemed stuck in that state of being between asleep and awake, when it's hard to tell if you are experiencing true paranormal events or are outright hallucinating. I had the sensation of the house being full of people just out of sight. I kept seeing what I thought were people but after a second glance realized it was just something else. My husband thought I'd lost my mind but I was perfectly lucid and discussed it all with my doctor, who said I was perfectly rational. She felt my brain chemistry was probably out of whack and I took a serotonin reuptake inhibitor for probably longer than I really needed to. But it did the trick of bringing me back to feeling like normal and not like I was just waking but could not wake all the way up.

There are still things sometimes happening in my house that could still be described as paranormal, which I do talk about on ATS, but it is all certainly a very different experience from dealing with brain chemistry imbalance caused by long term sleep deprivation.

My mom got loopy and acted like she was seeing people that weren't there after she had a hard battle with an antibiotic resistant systemic infection. She was also on pain meds at the time. We feared for awhile she was slipping out of her decades long remission from mental illness, but she recovered fully after she felt well enough to get proper sleep again. A friend went through something similar after a battle with severe pneumonia. With all that your loved one has been through, all the assaults on her system, there is still hope that this is not a permanent condition. Prepare for the worst but hope for the best. Please update us when you can.

I forgot...I think my mom was also battling e Coli in addition to another superbug at the time she seemed to be seeing things. There may be a link to e Coli we should research. Definitely listen to the person who posted about UTI causing such disturbances.

reply to post by SheeplFlavoredAgain


Thank you for your reply.This gives me some hope, as I'm sure she doesn't get as much sleep as she really should.

The pain from her legs and feet, her back and everything else keeps her awake quite a bit.

The e coli poisoning, well that's a story that makes me really angry actually. She caught it from the hospital. She needed a pain pump installed in her chest to help manage the pain so we took her to a pretty renowned hospital roughly 3 hours away because we didn't trust our local hospital to perform the surgery.

From what we learned later, after she was in her coma, was that someone may have failed to wash the item, or their hands, or an instrument, because the hospital had actually introduced the e coli to her system. She went home after the surgery despite telling them that she didn't feel well enough to leave.

Once home she just got worse. An ambulance rushed her to the local hospital after she had a terrible episode in her house.

The local hospital didn't check her records, and failed to see that she was allergic to phenergan, so they gave her a shot for nausea...and she went into a coma. She was then airlifted to the same hospital that gave her the pain pump, where they were able to determine that she had come in contact with e coli, and it was likely from the installation of her pain pump. She was out for 3 or 4 days, and when she woke up she didn't remember any of us for several more days. She just stared at us like we were as unrecognizable as the hospital staff.

They had to remove the pain pump for fear that it was what gave it to her in the first place. Despite that being one of the only methods of pain management that had actually worked.

It still makes me really angry to think about, but she didn't want to get involved in a legal battle with either hospital, so we (somewhat angrily) respected her wishes. I hadn't thought about it, but maybe it does have something to do with the e coli.

E coli is no joke, and I'm sorry to hear that you and your mother went through similar issues. It's very scary, although it does give me some hope that maybe it's just sleep deprivation. She hasn't been to her doctor yet, (I think she goes this week) but I will definitely update with a status report when she does.

She hasn't done anything like that in several days. She told my mom she feels fine, and is looking forward to hosting my little brothers birthday party this weekend, so maybe she has been getting more sleep.

- Forgot to add - The UTI thing is very possible. My uncle thought of that too, and gave her some natural remedies to try and cure it. So maybe that explains why she's not done this in a few days. sigh With so many factors, it's hard to know.

But thank you again. (I didn't mean to write a book. I just got started on that story, and all that anger came back and I just wrote on. )

reply to post by jacktorrance


I told a couple other posters I would update when we learned anything, so here we go.

First, thank you all again. Due to some of your responses, we think this may be (hopefully is) solved.

Apparently my grandmother had a terrible UTI, as a few mentioned was likely. She has been treated, and for the past week or more, has not had any other strange happenings. At least none that she has told us, which I hope is not the case.

She's on medication now to treat that and has been staying better hydrated, and it seems to be taking care of itself. Even though she still has several medical issues, we are all very relieved that this seems to have subsided.

So to everyone that responded, thank you all. Your answers were comforting, helpful and encouraging.

It means a lot to have a community like this to count on !