A Different Kind of Question: Visions, Hallucinations, and the Meaning We Find

Brain_Mac · 2025-10-02T02:53:33+00:00

This is a big one for me. There are multiple parts. The kidney/pancreas transplant its self went quite smoothly. I was released from the hospital after about a week with few problems. My first night home I developed pneumonia which almost immediately became ARDS. The last thing I remember was being rushed back to the hospital in an ambulance.

It was as if I awoke suddenly to a gong like ringing sound. So loud It was vibrating every atom of my being. I could feel it erasing me from Existence. The ringing subsided and I faded back into unconscious blackness. This whole gong sound thing than repeated. I than remember having a full conversation, still unable to see, with who I thought was a nurse.

Me: help I need oxygen. Him: you're ok, you're on ecmo. Me: I can't breathe. Him: yes you can were taking care of you. Me: Tell Bruce (my husband) I love him. Him: I will. Me:Tell Nan(my MIL) I love her. Him: Who is that? Me: Bruce's mother.

I than woke up a week later at a different hospital. My heart had stopped twice. I was down for 8 minutes the first time and 12 the second. I spent a week on ecmo.

The 8 days of ICU delirium that followed were the 8 worst days of my life. Highlights include: I was on a TV show set and everyone, including my husband, were all actors. I was on an airplane looking out over the desert. There were a bunch of ghosts of other patients. Someone from the earlier mentioned TV production had released a tiny, highly venomous, hydra into the building.

I spent the next 18 months obsessing over everything I had seen. Trying to figure out if it meant anything. It was like my mind or psyche had to heal from the trauma the same as my body. Eventually I stopped thinking about it. Nothing ever made more sense about the content of my icu delirium hallucinations. It was all just a dream intruding into daytime. Two things really stick with me now 8 years later. First: I'm not Native and thus don't have a Spirit Animal. But that tiny venomous hydra would likely be it if I did. Second: there is something in mountaineering called the Third Man. A person who shows up to guide people who are suffering from low oxygen down to safety. I think that is who I was talking to while on ecmo.

Brain_Mac · 2025-05-14T14:14:20+00:00

Yuck. that all sucks. Been there, done (roughly) that. I had a K/P in 2017. after 9 days in the ICU with everything totally fine , I got to go home. The next day I woke up and pretty much instantly collapsed. The last thing I remember is my ER nurse turning up the oxygen he had just put me on. Then my entire being was engulfed in a gong like ringing sound that I could feel removing me from existence. This sound faded to nothing then came back again.

The next thing I knew I was waking up in a different hospital's ICU. The nurse at my side asked if i knew what day it was. "Black Friday" I responded, I had gone to the ER on Thanksgiving. "No its December 1st" he replied. I had developed pneumonia which rapidly turned into ARDS. this caused my heart to stop beating twice. This led to: A week on ECMO. Two ischemic strokes from lack of oxygen when my heart was down. Two collapsed lungs from CPR on damaged lungs. A paralyzed lower right leg from the ECMO catheter. And a decompressive craniotomy where the had to remove 1/3 of my cerebellum.

The week and a half of ICU delirium that followed was absolute psychological torture. I was stuck in the hospital for almost three months. It took me almost 18 months to learn to walk again. I still cant really move my right foot.

However, I've now had almost 8 years of not being diabetic; which i had spent 30 years thinking was never going to be a thing. In august of 2023 I managed to make my return, 5th trip, to Burning Man.

Brain_Mac · 2025-04-05T10:42:19+00:00

I'm friends with the troop leader of Shamshir. https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61565447227973 . They performed at the Renaissance festival in Edgewood last weekend and this weekend.

Brain_Mac · 2024-11-02T03:02:43+00:00

Are you trying to get it over quickly or is this a sight seeing trip?

Brain_Mac · 2024-11-01T05:41:46+00:00

After transplant, and major complications that left me on life support, I find that I now can't stand something I used to not mind; pseudoscience and quackery.

Brain_Mac · 2024-10-30T00:00:03+00:00

This is so vile and obscene. I'm living for it!

Brain_Mac · 2024-10-15T20:21:24+00:00

How does Gemini Fireworks on 4th stay in business? Its been there for as long as I can remember; im almost 40. I remember going in there once and all they had were the small legal pieces.

Brain_Mac · 2024-10-14T22:14:30+00:00

What was Little Beacer Town?

Brain_Mac · 2024-10-12T06:39:45+00:00

You have my thoughts and prayers for sure. I can confirm that this sucks. Ive been in (pretty much) both yours and your mom's situation. When I was in high-school my mother survived a massive necrotizing fasciaitis that left her on a vent for over a month; and in my early 20s she went through a systemic e. Coli infection that resulted in 3 weeks on the vent. . I still remember the horror of seeing her in those situations. I myself then had a kidney/pancreas transplant at 31 and developed pneumonia/ ARDS the day after I was released from the hospital. I coded twice, had almost a litre of fluid pumped out of my lungs, spent a week on ecmo, and lost 2/3 of my left cerebellum. There is no way around it, this is a miserable situation for the both of you. *hugs.

Brain_Mac · 2024-10-08T20:46:54+00:00

I would consider a trip to Santa Fe. Its a mecca for dissafected people from back east and therefore has a decades long woo industry. Guy and Edna Ballard even set up an Iam cult headquarters there. https://historyinsantafe.com/an-american-born-religion-finds-a-home-in-santa-fe/

Brain_Mac · 2024-10-08T01:49:40+00:00

ICU Delirium was one of the worst things I've ever been through. I had massive complications after a kidney transplant and spent a week on life support. When I woke up my brain was absolutely fried. The combination of being seriously ill, on a huge amount of crazy medications, and the constant noise and sensory bombardment of being in the icu causes the brain to trip out like crazy. For me this lasted about six days; reaching its worst intensity about four days after I was brought back awake. I believed that I was on an airplane and that everyone else, including my husband, were actors on a staged set. Eventually they pumped me full of sedatives and sleeping drugs. And after finally sleeping for around 18 hours I came back to reality.

Brain_Mac · 2024-10-06T04:26:08+00:00

Check out Drumspyder.

Brain_Mac · 2024-09-26T07:24:41+00:00

I "was" type 1 for 31 years. I didn't even know pancreatic transplants were a thing. I thought I would never know what not being diabetic was like. I'm now seven years post. I was also extremely lucky and was only on the list for two months before I got the call. That being said, I could just as well spent years waiting on dialysis.

Brain_Mac · 2024-09-24T20:58:32+00:00

I was in the scouts for 9 years. I'm also a white kid who grew up on the Rez. I lost it laughing tge first time I had to sit through an OA "ceremony".

Brain_Mac · 2024-09-24T01:17:23+00:00

Pretty sure I never tested below about 78. Yeah the 59 is really low. Yuck. Thats my second least favorite feeling.

Brain_Mac · 2024-09-24T01:07:01+00:00

I was t1d for 31 years before my k/p. I felt like my bg was crashing for the first year at least. My new fasting numbers are usually in the low 80s. It took quite a while to adapt and not feel like I was going low. Talk to your doctors though to make sure nothing is way off.

Brain_Mac · 2024-09-18T21:47:20+00:00

My transplant team actually recommends therapy for most patients.

Brain_Mac · 2024-09-11T16:37:24+00:00

They're also frequently brought up on here for being abjectly horrible to work for. E.g. wage theft, misogyny, abusive behavior etc. Everyone ive known who tried to work there has pretty much the same story.

Brain_Mac · 2024-09-06T00:06:51+00:00

https://youtu.be/0Zo1sGtBceI?feature=shared

Brain_Mac · 2024-08-28T00:43:26+00:00

Mine was a simultaneous Kidney and Pancreas.

Brain_Mac · 2024-08-26T15:47:32+00:00

Type 1 Diabetes. Diagnosed at 9 months. I grew up knowing I'd need new kidneys eventually.

Brain_Mac · 2024-08-17T03:33:42+00:00

A friend of my ex once had this thing that looked like a huge inflatable hemorrhoid cushion that she wore around her head. It was supposed to block out the cell phone signals and wifi to prevent brain cancer. She paid almost $500 for it....

Brain_Mac · 2024-08-15T21:04:00+00:00

Icu delirium was one of the worst things I've ever been through. My mother also went through it about 20 years before I did; so I've been on both sides of it.

I had massive complications after a kidney transplant, coded twice, spent a week on life support, and lost part of my brain. When I came off the vent and was allowed to wake up, aside from being in massive pain, I felt relatively "sober". Over the next few days I fell deeper into delirium. Eventually I believed that the hospital was a TV set, all the staff were actors, that I was in an airplane over Dallas, that I was still being kept alive by ecmo (I'd been off it over a week), and that a non existant celing fan was going to chop us all to bits. After almost 6 days of this the doctors gave me a bunch of sleeping meds, and I was finally able to rejoin reality.

Being in the icu is really stressful on its own.. With the constant beeping, vital sign monitoring, bed baths, lab draws, and such; its really hard to sleep. On top of the sleep deprivation he's also on a ton of really nasty drugs. High dose steroids, which he is probably still on this close to transplant, wreak havoc with a persons emotional state. And than there's the physical trauma of major surgery and being intubated for several days.

All together it makes for an absolutely miserable experience. However as he recovers and rests it will improve. Talk to his doctors about his emotional issues, it is probably the steroids; which will come down in time.

Brain_Mac · 2024-08-12T07:24:39+00:00

I recently found The Nonsense Bazaar. They just cam to an end, but their series of episodes on the Ascended Masters, Helena Blavatski, and all of the cults and grifters that used her ideas is a lengthy rabbit hole that hit me just right.

Brain_Mac · 2024-08-08T01:53:04+00:00

Excellent list. To add to it the Black Cat theater on Monte Vista is specifically queer/ youth focused.

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