By Scott Reddoch
I guess the hallucinations started right after the second stroke.
I didn’t know where I was in the beginning. I couldn’t communicate. I couldn’t even open my eyes in the early days. But I was seeing things. Vivid things. Reality and fantasy blended together. I wasn’t having humorous hallucinations then.
I don’t remember many dreams from my life, but even to this day those hallucinations have stayed with me. Some of them are so disturbing they can’t be discussed.
The napkin man was in many of them. I can discuss a few. He was entirely covered by rolled cloth napkins. He was human. Sometimes he would help me, but like many characters, he was mainly interested in mischief. He would just appear. I was always surprised to see him. The napkin man was always pulling tricks on me. He would get me to make the wrong decision about things and then disappear. I would be angry about it, but I was happy to see someone familiar when he showed up.
There was this baby giraffe who was always knocking things over. It would be all over. It didn’t follow any specific path. It loved to knock over trashcans and trays that the nurses would set up to work.
One of the nurses was trying to kill me. That’s what I thought. She was about six feet tall, lean and muscular, void of a face. She was in her mid-thirties. I thought she was using an ink pen to puncture my air hose and just did mean things to me when no one was looking. I was at hospital four, directly before Touro, when I started with that one. I was pretty sure I was going to die there.
I remember one very vividly. I was at a friend’s house and they had me hiding under the dining table. The bad nurse was trying to kill me, but I escaped the hospital. There was a manhunt for me. I had fallen asleep and was awakened by the bad nurse stabbing my air hose. My friends saw this and threw her out of the window.
I didn’t know what was a hallucination and what was reality. There wasn’t a defining moment when I thought I was hallucinating. It seemed real to me.
I had hallucinations almost constantly for the first two months. They became intermittent after that. I didn’t really have many for the final weeks I was in the hospital. The hallucinations just faded away. I don’t recall having many in month seven, and I haven’t had any since I’ve been out of the hospital.
My mom stayed with me while I was in the hospital. She could tell I was seeing things before I could communicate. She could see fear in my eyes during some of my hallucinations. I have some subtle expressions, but my eyes were the real sign. I dealt with it all alone. I was in an alternate universe.
My vision had been damaged by the second stroke. Doctors initially thought I was blind. I could see, but I wasn’t aware that a lot of strange views were due to the damage. Not knowing I had vision damage made the hallucinations even more bizarre. I could open my eyes within the first week, but I couldn’t communicate.
As I became more aware, I thought I had lost my mind. I was seeing things that weren’t possible. I remember asking a doctor if I was crazy. He was prescribing me medication for the hallucinations and speaking with my mother and me about it. When he asked if there were any questions, I used the letterboard to ask him if I were crazy. He said that I wasn’t, and that the hallucinations and nightmares are common with strokes.
Nothing anchored me to reality. I was in this alternative place. It was based in reality, but it seemed like everyone was trying to trick me. Even people that I trusted in real life were trying to get me. I remember things being really dark and lonely.
Sometimes you’re just in hell for a while and then you’re not. You can’t laugh or think your way out of it. You just have to get through it.
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