Tue the 30th of Mar – Angels and Demons

I can’t remember the precise nature of our conversation but I know it triggered the strange event that followed. It starts with Mar saying that she gets it: “Oh my God Paul.Oh my God! I get it!” I don’t know what exactly she gets but her moment of enlightenment has her bursting in tears and seconds later screaming her head off. Just before, she stares at me with intense conviction and very “lucidly” explains something about Angels and Demons. I try to calm her: “Mar, everything’s ok. Come back, Mar. Everything’s ok.” Her outburst attracts the nurse’s attention and soon after, that of the Doctor. Both are women. Eyes bulging, extremely pale faced, she continues on about the war waged between the Angels and the Demons. Among many names (which I shall not document to protect the privacy of the recipients!), she lists the doctors that are Angels and those that are Demons (luckily the Doctor holding her is an Angel. Incidentally so am I. Pfew!). “We have to win” she says. She looks intently at the Doctor and asks in Italian: “You understand, don’t you? Don’t you? No. You don’t! You don’t!” She struggles to free herself from her captors' grip and to get out of bed. She gets violent. I am pushed aside by the doctor and both she and the nurse are holding her back. But in Mar’s skewed perception, they don’t get it and therefore must be against her since they are preventing her from spreading the word. So she tries to kick the doctor out of her way, who clearly must have turned over to the dark side thus becoming a fallen Angel. They’re worried she’ll rip out her catheter which is connected to the plasmaferesis machine. I’m told to fetch another nurse. As I rush out - stumbling backwards, unable to tear away, riveted by the scene - Mar, still held down reaches for me and shouts (in English): “Paul. Call the Media!”. Hilarious…Were it said at any other time and context (later in the day we’ll laugh about it) but right now it’s a nightmare. After a good five minutes (that seem to last forever), Mar has regained some form of composure. I’m back by her side, holding her hand, smoothing her hair, trying to get her attention and repeating several times: “Mar, listen to me. Look at me. You just had a hallucination. It’s ok. It happens. Everything’s ok”. She still seems overly consumed by whatever chemically induced epiphany she witnessed and just when I think she’s back in our world, she whispers to me…”Are we back in our human forms?”

Gradually she relaxes and realizes what just happened. She’s mortified and deeply embarrassed. The doctor and nurse reassure her that she’s not the first to succumb to such an episode. Apparently Mar is experiencing paranoid hallucinations. The doctors are running more tests to determine what’s provoking them. They narrow it down to three main suspects: the medication she’s on, the ear infection that may have spread or the syndrome (Moskowich) that may be causing little blood clots in her brain. Thankfully, these mental side effects are reversible.

There’s more. She’s also been suffering from involuntary spasms and light convulsions. Mar is completely panicked and for the last three nights has been unable to sleep. In this period, the doctors have been very frequent visitors in her hospital room and Mar’s been making full use of this “complimentary room service”.

When the doctors aren’t available, she resorts to explaining her condition to the nurses. Unconvinced by one of the nurse’s ability to retain information and doubting his understanding of her situation, Mar proceeds to write down every felt symptom along with her self diagnosis and urges him to pass this on to the doctors. Nothing conveys a message more seriously than writing on a pink, kiss shaped, sticky note (the one I use to write her words of encouragement)… “Dear Doctors….My nervous system is slowly detaching from my brain. Help!”

Last night her fear culminated in a phone call to me at 3am asking me to come over. Always true to her nature, even in her terrorized and delusional frame of mind, she still tried not to alarm me: “Paul! Paul! Don’t be afraid, ok? But I need you to come here in the next 2 hours. Can you do that?” Of course I could! And I’ll stay for as long as she needs.

In hindsight, both Mar and I agree that her behavior has been a touch odd if not paranoid in the last week! For example, she was convinced that one of the nurses is a psycho, out to get her by tampering with the liquid medication bags. Unsurprisingly, this nurse fell in the Demon category of my earlier story.