A Floating Nurse, A Catheter Exchange, A Panice Attack, and Hallucininating from Ativan (Kidney Failure)

 A Floating Nurse, A Catheter Exchange, A Panic Attack, and Hallucinating from Ativan (Kidney Failure)

 

    During one night, I had a floating nurse. A floating nurse works on whatever floor needs extra nurses. She told me she needed to spend a lot of her time with other patients that needed her more than I did and so she set up several bedpans and wipes and told me I would be set for the night. My muscles were pretty weak, hence the reason I needed the bedpans in the first place. It was a very challenging night to get through. When I told my mom about what happened she was quite upset. Fortunately, I did not have her for a second night.

    I was having a little trouble with dialysis. My catheter was a little small and the machine was constantly needing to be monitored as the alarms kept going off. The catheter was having trouble keeping up with the flow of blood. My blood kept clotting in the machine. It was decided that I needed to have a catheter exchange. It would be done at my bedside. I was given a dose of Ativan to calm me down. They needed to take out the current catheter and exchange it with a larger one. I’m not entirely sure how this was done as I kept my eyes closed, and because the Ativan had me drifting off into another world of hallucinations.  I just remember them putting what seemed like grape jelly on the area. This wasn’t a hallucination. I just have no idea what it was for or what it was.

    I remember one night, one of my sisters had been visiting, and I was having a panic attack. I felt the same impending doom as when I was on the transplant floor. She tried to calm me down and distract me while we waited for the Ativan. It seemed to take forever. I felt like I might die any minute. She tried to distract me with pictures of my niece. I finally got the Ativan, and I noticed my nurse looked different. She looked angelic. My sister had to leave as it was getting late and she had to get back to her baby. She needed to nurse and she couldn’t stay. I didn’t want her to leave. I was still scared, but she had to go. I felt guilty for making her feel bad for leaving me. I knew she didn’t want to leave me in my condition, but she had no other choice. When she left, I noticed that everything in my room had a presence about it; as if it were alive.  I could sense everything was sentient. The hot air blanket was alive, as were most of the other inanimate objects in my room. I put all the lights on in my room and put the tv on. I was too afraid to even try to sleep that night, but just as afraid to stay awake. I should mention, during this stay, I had Pareidolia; I could see faces in things. This isn’t what made me sense a presence in the objects.  The objects weren’t presenting with faces, just an essence of being alive. The pareidolia stayed with me as a lingering side effect for a good month or two after I left the hospital.

    Another random thing that happened, is whenever I did manage to sleep, or whenever I was brought back from a procedure, I thought I was constantly getting new rooms. To me, the room looked completely different each time. The whole essence of the room was different. I was shocked to later find that my room was the same room throughout the whole stay. I could swear that even the way it was set up was different.