During my missing 53 day in ICU in 2010/11 where I can remember nothing (from my diary entries I think it was a good thing) but some of the most frightening nightmares which I can remember as if it was yesterday.
I was wondering if anyone had any bizarre hallucinations once out of a coma? I can remember some very amusing ones, I saw red spider webs all across the ceiling which turned into infra red beams in a grid pattern and then pointing them out to the cleaners.
I was moved around the unit with my bed in different bays, while in one bay I was facing the two isolation rooms which provided more strange sights, I believed behind one of the beds was a fish tank then when I looked again it had changed back to all the machines and monitors, then I would see the nurses put overalls on and go in the room next to it and start painting it yellow I later found out they wore yellow aprons for that room.
The must bizarre one came after I had been there about 10 weeks, in the bed next to me was someone in full motorbike leathers and a crash helmet, the nurses told me he had been there 7 months and was going home that day, he had had a bad accident and severed both legs which they sewed back on he then got up and walked out the door.
I also believed my family told me things which they denied, they said it must have been the drugs.
I hope it's raised a few smiles, best wishes to all the community here.
Bill
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Luckyone
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I too had horrific nightmares and hallucinations during my month in ICU, and not many were amusing. But one day I thought I saw the staff involved in some very unusual sexual activity in the middle of the ward. Fascinating! That had to be an hallucination!
I will email you once I have put them into a document I'm writing for myself, slow but always forward process. It's like trying to grab jelly, the harder I try to write them down the harder it is to keep the details in my head.I'm also I interested in how our brain comes up with this stuff. I thought there were cats in the ward - actually a squeaky door + feet seen at bottom of curtains.
I would be interested in finding out what others experienced.
Luckyone- I've learned here, that hallucinations etc are very normal for us ex-ICU people.
Personally, I have found that even after 5 years, I can still remember mine vividly, but the scariness and emotional intensity has lessened considerably, thankfully.
BTW, I too was moved around - twice I was moved out of ICU (on one occasion at 2.30am) without notice because 'we need the bed'. I was put into 'ordinary' wards, but deteriorated and moved back to ICU.
The moving around made my existing sense of disorientation, powerlessness, and anxiety even worse.
Hello Bill, I hope you are ok now, i had nightmares too, believe it or not the Kray twins were involved and there was alot of violence, i had to walk down a black spiral staircase going nowhere also my bed went vertical in the ward and i was upright over the edge of something, it was very weird, i never did find out the reason i can only presume it was the drugs they put in me, i was in their because i had an epileptic fit at home and was taken in, alot of fuss over nothing really, anyway i hope you are ok now and get well, all the best
18 months ago,I was in a coma for 50 days ,48 hours before getting unplugged and let go.I have recalled 44 days of living in a parallel world,they are not dreams
It’s not possible to create these type of episodes,when one is very unwell and fighting for life,most days I would be somewhere other then hospital and most days in this other world were long and difficult,sometimes they felt endless,some where horrible but there was no escape,I was physically somewhere else stuck in various places,having panic attacks,trying to decipher things ,trying to avoid conflict,trying to get home somehow ,sometimes I would meet someone on one day and they may be involved for a few days ,then gone but weeks later they would pop up elsewhere,I would be both suprised and happy to see them ,it was unexpected as I did not think I would ever see them again,I can’t make that up ,I also brought a pub at auction,the Clevedon hotel it’s not a real hotel where I live but I went there .
I also saw my father who’s been dead for 25 years,we had a few beers,he wasn’t impressed with my pub which upset me a bit coz I thought he would be proud but he kept saying it wasn’t as good as the pub he ran ,but I owned this one.
So many different situations and somewhere along the line I realised I was really sick ,so then I was in various different medical centres which was a pain in the Arse .I can vividly remember every single episode in minute details sometimes I can’t remember last week but my memory is like replaying a movie ,it was very scary,I drank and ate food even made and tasted desserts,that’s no dream and how can I create new episodes every day that last many hours,then wake up in a totally different scenario with absolutely no knowledge of where I am or what the heck is going on.
It warned me of future dangers and some of the things I did have since come true,it absolutely freaks me out .
The clocks always seemed to tick backwards then while watching a documentary about other worlds the scientists say in a parralel world the time would go backwards.
When I tell people about them they get confused and think I was talking about real life because no one describes a dream as if it’s real life .
I now have no fear of death because this world is just the beginning for us.
I remember spiders crawling all over my hospital bed, seeing a nurse who was an old friend of mine (she happens to be a nurse by profession) and seeing my sister and her husband talk to me via a visual monitor screen, All these incidents were non factual. I do remember some of nurses but not the doctors. I recently went to my follow up appointment and met some nurses who I don't recall but some I do.
I too remember some funny hallucinations like believing the nurses were getting me cleaned because I was going to a party with the other patients.. Also several time trying to pull all my wires/lines thinking I was on a boat pulling its cords. I also often thought I was not alone in my isolation room and even felt the 'others' were encouraging me when I was struggling ,including a friend of mine and I very often could hear my husband talk to me when he wasn't there.. However I also remember some terrible hallucinations and thoughts I had such as becoming convinced that all my family had been taken into ICU as well after a terrible car accident on their way to visiting me leaving me feeling it was all my fault and I deserved to die.. I also thought an evil nurse was trying to harm me as she didn't want me to survive so I hit her and tried to pull my ventilator out and attempted to desperately get out of my bed to flee.. I also wondered if Doctors had taken some of my organs and weren't telling my husband the truth and were keeping me quiet by keeping me on a ventilator so I couldn't talk.. My husband told me on one occasion I wrote to him on the notepad they give you to communicate that I knew I 'd had open-heart surgery ;He'd told me I didn't but I was very adamant I did.. Fortunately all these hallucinations and thoughts left me pretty much as soon as I left ICU and things slowly returned to normality ,somehow I felt these hallucinations wouldn't return then but It took me a while to make sense of the trauma . I was lucky to receive a lot of support from family and friends which greatly helped me in my recovery ; All feels very normal nowadays and these memories are like distant bad dreams & no longer have effects on me even though I often think of the time I spent in ICU .
Oh yes, these stories, we can almost laugh at them now (or not) but at the time they are very distressing! I was on a ship a couple of different times, a plane, in Cambridge university, won a competition on the ward and my prize was an intimate examination which determined that I used to be a man!! lol!, I was in the derelict remains of an old hospital, down a dungeon several times, and heard goats outside the window!! Not to mention the one specific nurse (poor girl!) who was evil and trying to kill me! Apparently when I was actually awake my language was pretty colourful as I was continually begging to get out of the hospital away from all the horrors!
Well a lot of my hallucinations involved satan, helicopters and evil nurses involved in taking patient's souls for their crazy cult. I can understand the helicopter part, the hospital has a helipad next to A&E and this is downstairs from ICU. The nurses were probably saints and saying nice sweet things but what I heard was the most evil talk I've heard about how terrible a person I was and how pointless my life was. It was all one big conspiracy but it was just ICU delirium and psychosis on waking from an induced coma. I think the drugs they use and prolonged induced coma affects the brain organically for a while. I think they gave me Haloperidol to get me sane as I was out of it for days, maybe a week. We still know little of the brain's processes in ICU.
I had a similar one that stay until a week after. It was basically a nasty Dr wanted my bed as I was not worth saving. Delirium I was so convinced and I still feel like it was real. Even though I know it was not. It's been four weeks since I woke. I keep being told it will pass. I hope it gets a move on
Thanks to everyone for your replies, we've all got our memories of ICU some good, some bad, but we all have one thing we're never forget, we came through the other side thanks to the dedicated doctors & nurses of ICU that worked tirelessly to save our lives something I'm sure we're all grateful for.
I thought I saw an entire family of about 10 people go into a patients room. They had balloons and a card the size of a small child. They also had confetti and noise makers. I remember wishing they would come into my room. But of course it was just hallucinations.
Hi, I was ventilated in March for 16 days. I also had very vivid, weird & scary dreams. From spiders entwined in my hair. Another with a giant spider with claws attached to my abdomen, I could feel the pressure of it holding on.
I had an awful one that my mum had died in front of me. I didn’t believe that she was alive until I saw her on FaceTime after I was off the ventilator. There were some funny ones aswell, I was in charge of the guest list for Ant Mcpartlands wedding. I had all these celebrities doing crazy games so they could get on the guest list.. These all continued when I got home. I still have the vivid dreams but not as frequently. However I have received some councilling to help deal with them. There were just so many dreams, far too many to list.
I had some very strange dreams while in induced coma. I was on a rowing boat being dragged along then being pulled into a huge propeller,also I was in a garage where the mechanics were working on me as if I was an engine pulling metal parts out of me and changing my oil etc.. since coming round I've been having very strange dreams of being locked in weird places such as boots of cars and freezers,and the usual falling and drowning dreams.
I recently had an mri scan and since this my flashbacks have been a lot worse..
This group is helping me put things into perspective a bit and it's good to hear other people's stories
I had many strange visions while in coma in icu.I dreamt I was in 1920s ish on a rowing boat being pulled into a ships propeller rowing for dear life trying to escape,also being in a garage with mechanics working on engines all around me .
Lots of horrible ones too that I struggle to remember but sounds like pumps and beeping noises scare me now making me feel sick and panicky.
I had several hallucinations, some funny or ridiculous and some scary and frightening. The funniest was seeing 3ft slugs crawling up the walls and on the floors with medical staff trying to kill them! So real I was looking around for them. I also had one, which even now 15 months on unerve me. I dreamt I was being held down and a doctor was causing me the most excruciating pain up my nose! Saw him on the ward later and recall feeling upset that he was there and a strong dislike of him. Then realised it was just a dream, he never hurt me. Only to find some weeks later it was all real, they were placing a bridal in my nose to stop me pulling a tube out of my nose!
This particular dream still haunts me and makes me feel violated in a way.
I had several! I saw my family waving outside my room, I was in ICU during COVID so my family couldn’t even get in the hospital. I desperately tried to tell them to come in.
I also hallucinated I was in the maternity ward, and I kept hearing babies being born, and nurses cheering.
I also remember drawing pictures of flowers for my nurses
Hi. I was in an induced coma for five weeks. I had a lot of nightmares and hallucinations upon returning home. I got into a fight once with my chest of drawers and once with my filing cabinet. I won both contests. The filing cabinet wound up on the floor. Fortunately, I didn’t need to call for the filing cabinet ambulance. It’s been 6 years now that I came home from hospital. Although I don’t have many nightmares anymore I do not trust myself to sleep in the same room with another.
Have just come across this post . I had the most awful hallucinations that went on for 3 months . It was when covid was at its height so had no visitors . My bed was a coffin and i had discovered an underground ring of experiments on people . At one point i was at the local undertakers where i was surrounded by bodies and the people that were trying to kill me. I had a meat hook above my head and they were all circling the coffin with knives like a ritual and i was made to drink blood . There are so many more and to be honest i am surprised that i have not gone completely mad . I have started emdr as i now have ptsd and am hoping this will help.
I’m pretty new to this forum but reading through this thread really makes sense of some of the delirium I went though. Non of it funny I’m afraid but certainly some common threads. I think I can vividly recall as least half a dozen different scenarios.The main thing for me was the feeling of being rescued “just in time”, but also for of the guilt I now feel is that the perpetrators of some of the evil things being done to me were either close friends or work colleagues.
My general hallucinations were of the nurses being in a conspiracy against me, which I believe is pretty common one. However the nurses were various people I've known over the years. Others were "Ian Beale" being in the next bed and Gillian Taylforth being in the next curtained off bed (so I didn't actually see her. I've never watched a single episode of East Enders. The ward being decorated like an English pub and going for an endoscopy in the underground car park, There isn't one
My ones...my husband flew from India ( we are not indians) to be with me and i was on the flight with so much turbulence.
I flew to Thailand where i coukd hear the baboons screaming at night, i was cinvinced they were being slaughtered to extract a serem to inject into human beings. I believed this one for about a month after coming home.
Another one..my nephew lived in the bush (forest) and he realeased wild digs so people could hunt them..omg..i told the young nurses on night duty not to go outside because they could get attacked by the wild dogs.
One night i was 100% that my 17 year old daughter slept on the chair next to me and in the morning i needed to go find her because i was worried that there were lots of strange men in the hospital..i told my son over the phone and he blatantly told me she was at home and had never been in the hospital.
These seem funny but at the time we really lived these hallucinations.
I still have bad nightmares and hallucinations from my stay in ice in may 2022 I also feel really guilty that i out my family and friends through such heartache and worry
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