Discovering I have ICU Psychosis and Leaving the ICU (Kidney Failure)

 Discovering I have ICU Psychosis and Leaving the ICU (Kidney Failure)

 

    Dialysis had been working. I was starting to feel better and I was shedding all of my fluid weight I had been carrying around. I was gaining more muscle back too. On what would be my last day in the ICU, I was sitting alone in my room. I had just eaten lunch. I was thinking about calling my sister, it was her birthday. Then, I suddenly heard a voice from the next room over say, “Oh it’s her sister's birthday.” I thought, “That's strange.” What a weird coincidence that they would be talking about the very same thing I just happened to be thinking. So, I leaned in closer to hear their conversation better. Then one of them said, “Oh look, now she’s trying to hear what we’re saying.” Panic immediately radiated throughout my body. I thought, “I need to call my dad.” Then I hear one of them say, “Oh look now she's gonna call her dad.” I was freaking out! I didn’t know what was happening. I thought I must have schizophrenia. I immediately called my dad, my mom, and my sister too. My mother came to visit with a friend until my sister was able to come. My sister decided to spend the night with me to keep me company, despite it being her birthday.

    At this point, we informed the doctor on call of what was going on. Up until now, I just thought the Ativan was making me hallucinate and it was having that effect because my kidneys weren’t able to clear the medicine out of my system. The doctor told me I had ICU psychosis. This is common to get in the ICU. It is caused by a lack of sleep from the alarms and noises and from the way the ICU is set up. I had a hard time believing that a person could hallucinate for those reasons. They gave me a dose of Haldol and my body began twitching involuntarily for some time. Not too long after taking it, I began to feel tired. I finally got some real sleep for the first time since being there. Up until this point, I only slept for 20 minutes at a time. However, at 4am, my sister and I would be woken up. A bed had become available on the transplant floor, and since I was doing better, and they determined I had ICU psychosis, they thought I would fare better on a regular floor.