I lost my lovely mam a week and a bit ago and I am trying to piece together what has gone in. She has had a few episodes where the doctors have thought she had encephalitis but then has bounced back but not this time.
mat the beginning of January she was unwell so I took her to A&e where she had a seizure in the waiting room and then another one whilst she was in the hospital bed. She was very I’ll then became conscious but had delirium and paranoia she was on antibiotics but she wouldn’t take them so they just had her on a drip. This subsided after a few days and she seemed to massively improve. We talked about discharge and then all of a sudden she talked about feeling like death was around her and that she had seen bright white snow on the ward and she had kaleidoscope patterns in front of her eyes. Then she had a day of being very sickly, then she started to have problems swallowing and I said look what is happening here. When her speech deteriorated (speech problems and slurring occurred many times over the past few years) the doctors then took notice. She was out on a side ward and they talked about doing another MRI and a lumbar puncture. The following day I went to see her and she was unconscious. They did the MRI and found encephalitis and then the lumbar puncture showed herpes simplex virus. They had already started her on antivirals and antibiotics but she didn’t gain consciousness and we lost her on Jan 27th. I am puzzled why they didn’t ‘catch it’ when she first went in but scans were clear. Could this have been prevented if the treated sooner and also it feels like this has raised its ugly head again after her being in hospital for four weeks the year before and her behaviour being just like this case. Be so happy to hear from anyone else who has had this type of encephalitis z thanks