Sabrina,

I went through my second bout of GBS last October through Jan ’07. While in ICU, I too had halluciantions that I can still remember a year later. The nurses told my family this was called ICU syndrome, which occurs to some who are in ICU for any length of time combined with the medication that is taken. I was eventually given an antidepressant.

The family gets to go home while the patient in left in basically one spot alone with their thoughts.

During my recovery, I tended to project where I was going (am I going to be wheelchair bound?). My family kept telling me to focus on where I was and how far I had come in the recovery process, rather than worry about what the future would hold. They were right, but it is sometimes difficult to accept.

Stacy,

The nurses I had in ICU told my family that my hallucinating was common to those who are in ICU for a long time. I was eventually given antidepression medication.

This is a year later and I can actually remember a number of the hallucinations that I had & I discussed them with my family. Some were funny and others were quite the opposite. While I was having them, my children were upset, until they were told it was “normal”. I think they were told it was ICU syndrome.

As I began recovery my family always told me to keep this in mind:

“Don’t project where you are going, think of how far you have come.”

Good luck with your dad.

BD18

Rest assured, hallucinations are quite common – it is funny to read back over them sometimes but believe me at the time they are very real. Apparently it is the combination of drugs and just being in the iCU environment.

It sounds like your dad has reqlly started to improve. It was almost 5 weeks before i could even stand and i was walk3ed out of hospital at 7 weeks so hopefully it is all downhill from here.

[QUOTE]This one’s a little weird. When I was in ICU and all morphed up, I had these incredible dreams that were not only very lucid (like hi-def) and realistic, but were extremely frightening. I had to be convinced by my family that these graphic scenes were not real and never occured.
[/QUOTE]

i got gbs in July this year. I was in a coma for 5 days and for the few days after i came out i had some really bizarre hallucinations that i were convinced were 100% real. From what i have read it is quite common for patients in icu to have hallucinations and to weave bits of rality into them – i know i was conscious of the names of nurses etc and they featured in my dreams. Even after i was “with it” i still imagined my surroundings were totally different to what they really were and i cant even blame drugs for that. I went back to the hospital for the first time the other week and it was so different to what i thought!

The funny thing is my whole GBS experience is starting to fade from memory even though it has only been a few months since i got out of hospital, but those hallucinations are still so vivid. They dont worry me though (even though some were pretty traumatic at the time) i just laugh at the funny things i imagined – including there being a theme park underneath the hospital.

Donna, he is not going mad; as Racer says this is well recognised ICU psychosis, occuring in quite a number of people going through ICU for any reason. DocDavid