Dealing with Hallucinations in Septic Shock

After reading all these posts brings back some unpleasant memories and the way things happened to me just made it all the more confusing. I had never had any bowel problems that I remember but one night I went to bed feeling pretty damn good, considering only four or five weeks earlier I had surgery for an abdominal aorta aneurysm and was getting better each day. About 3AM I woke up feeling really sick and the vomiting started and just kept on coming so my wife called our daughter and they were able to get me to the hospital. By this time I'm already loosing control and the doctors told my family I had to get to the city as quick as possible, and this is a 150 mile by ambulance because of the fog the helicopter was grounded and by the time they were putting me in the ambulance more of my family showed up, it was still dark outside and after that everything went blank. In the meantime the doctors were telling my wife and daughter they should be on their way to the city as things were not looking too good for me and the fun has just begun but I don;t know at what stages things were happening. What I do remember first was getting a CT Scan or an MRI the room was pretty dark and as this procedure went on it started, I realized these two guys who were talking in the room were planning on killing me and I wanted out of there fast, only when this procedure was finished they told me not to move as they were going to do another test on me, yeah, they were going to kill me so I jumped off the table and they yelled at me not to move because I had a catheter in me, which I promptly yanked out and I remember seeing blood on the front of the machine and these two guys are yelling for security and at that point all went blank. Now after I was put to sleep and apparently resting comfortably, my wife and daughter went to the cafeteria for a coffee and they were sitting pretty close to these guys all dressed in white and my daughter heard one of them say they had to call in security because some guy went off his rocker, so this part is fact and I still remember it clearly. What I didn't know was I was rushed into surgery and apparently this surgeon couldn't find anything wrong, so a couple of days later a new surgeon cuts me open again and when I woke up ten days later in ICU and things started up again, there was one nurse who was in this group of people who were out to kill Ed, and then my family started showing up and they tried to make me see it was only hallucinations I was having, bullshit, I knew these people were out to kill me. And finally this nurse realized I was having a rough time separating hallucinations from reality and she became my guardian angel and I told her about one nurse who was in on this conspiracy and when this other nurse put a bag on my table, ha, I just knew that the cake in it was poisoned and I shook my fist at her and pointed to this bag and motioned for her to take it away, which she did, and my angel nurse seen this and went out of her way to keep this nurse away from me. Finally, when a bunch of my family showed up the doctor said if they could keep me awake long enough they could take that damn pipe out of my throat and so they set out to keep me awake and you'd never believe the language they were using and the nurses were getting a kick out of all this and finally after a couple of hours of keeping me awake the doctor came in and removed that pipe and things were looking up but as my family were leaving one of my brothers hung back and as gently as he could he said, "Ed, we had to let them do a colostomy on you" at which point I completely lost it, I even managed to ask him why the #% K did you let them do that, and of course he gently told me what the other option was, so, OK, now I'm really screwed with these people trying to kill me and when I first pulled down the blankets and all I could see was bandages and hoses and didn't even know what a colostomy was, nor that what I had was an ileostomy and still these people trying to kill me, and here is my angel nurse and I can still hear her saying that sometimes these hallucinations can seem more real than reality itself and we would talk for a while and I would calm down, and finally this nurse who was in on this kill Ed bit went on vacation and by then I was really coming out of it, and was moved to a ward and for the first time I actually seen my stoma and started to get sick all over again but that didn't last long as we had business to take care of, I can still remember trying to put on my first wafer and still drugged up and the nurse had to remove what I had done and finished the job for me, and after eight days they let me go home and as my incision had a part that wasn't healing I had a nurse come in every day and really helped me out.
And on that note I will end my screed and know that others had to go through the same thing and we are about to enter that hell of coping with blockages, a whole Nudder Story, but we are survivors, peace and good luck to all, Ed

I had some pretty vivid dreams when I was in ICU and then high dependency, they did seem real. It's all the meds they give you. Still, I was freaked out by a couple of dreams I had. Once I was on the ward in a room of my own and off the morphine, I slept a lot better. I can honestly say I wouldn't want to go through it again as once was enough.

Some of the scariest poetic lines dealing with dreams were written by Shakespeare in Hamlet: "To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause". It has to do with a time when we feel our body and our soul are separating and we are absolutely alone facing unknown horrors. Our friends and our family can no longer help us. We may feel similarly disconnected from our bodies as we are coming out of the anesthesia with extremely high levels of anxiety and unbelievable hallucinations. I would like to say that this process is vaguely like a second birth leading to new experiences and new realizations. Fortunately, for most of us it's all only temporary; the anesthesia will wear off and everything will be back to normal very quickly. For a few of us, however, this experience is more than the quintessence of dust having a good hair day. It will be a prologue to some higher step in a marvelous and evolving journey toward the Light. PB

Boy, did I hallucinate....my trip - .I was in a TB ward near the border of Mexico and I was being groomed for organ harvesting....kidney, liver, etc.....the kids waiting were eating pizza and speaking in Spanish so I could not understand....Now the real part.......I called my 16-year-old son after midnight and my sis in Vegas - and told them of my story and begged for them to rescue me....My other sis notified the nurses about my reaction.......I was pressing my morphine drip (yes, in my spine) every 5 mins..........I was put on another med - but it was scary.

Not hallucinations, but for many years a recurring dream(s), all obviously related to our condition:
A desperate need to empty the bag which was beginning to come adrift, desperately searching for a toilet, finding one, but no door on it or an open side, all the while getting more and more distressed and output increasing, running, searching, being totally covered in excreta.
Still occasionally have it, or something similar after 38 years.

Have had a similar recurring dream, particularly the filthy revolting toilet (think of the movie "Trainspotting") and the faulty stall door or just a half door so you can see out (and in!), but have had these sort of dreams even before surgery so it may be just a fear of being seen perhaps or just a phobia of public restrooms, which I don't actually have, but glad to know I'm not the only one having these dreams!

Primeboy... I wish I could pull up a lawn chair somewhere quiet and peaceful with you and tell you how right on you absolutely are. NOBODY understands like a fellow traveler. For those of us who were truly shaken to the soul - EVERYTHING changes. EVERYTHING is cast in a different light. EVERYTHING matters.

I am SO grateful for my life and the things that this journey has both given and taken from me!!!!

I was just looking through the podcast and came across yours, and I am so happy to have found this, as I had the exact same thing happen to me. Only, I still believe I was raped, as I could see the mask he was wearing from surgery, and I will always believe this did happen. Three years later, I still have nightmares about the whole episode, and the first thing I said when I could talk was, "I was raped." Hope you are well by now, and I am so glad I saw this post. Hometown

Yes, I had hallucinations during my hospitalization for septic shock and emergency ileostomy surgery too. Weird ones. I blamed the morphine, LOL. How I got over it was basically just recovering from the horrible shock my body had just undergone. It took about six months for everything to settle down physically, but now I feel really good and I'm concentrating on just taking my vitamins and getting plenty of exercise. I try not to think about the really terrible parts of recovery because they are gone by now and there's no sense reliving something that's past over and over again. Honestly, I believe that if you are strong enough to go through what we all have gone through, then you are strong enough to put those awful memories behind you. Hallucinations are all they were, just remember that. And you're still here and functioning and living, and that's what really matters.

MMM,
Only way to go, girl.

In septic shock from a surgery gone bad... Does anyone know the long-term effects??????????

I know it is controversial but rather than take any pills, I use medical pot. It helps me eat, rest, and helps with pain. I try to not take pills as they are damaging. Eating pot seems to help differently. I was hospitalized for a month on high doses of morphine and Dilaudid. I did hallucinate but found certain mixtures of pharmaceutical drugs made the hallucinations worse. Of course, since I grew up in the 60's and 70's and experimented with a lot of recreational drugs, I had some experience with out of mind, body things and was able to deal with it. I still didn't like it and threw away all the pills when I got out of the hospital. No more hallucinations. Also, smoking pot dries you up a bit and the liquid lessens. I know this may offend some people and I truly apologize if it does, but it really does work, and feeling happy is not a bad side effect contrary to what we are led to believe by our government gurus.