Hallucinations

Hallucinations

My two night nightmares went like this. I was confined to bed in the stroke unit. I seemed to wake in the middle of the night.

Out of the foot of my bed I could clearly see the ward. Out of the left side of my bed I could see my living room and everything in it looked vivid in colour. I could see my side table, my chesterfield sofa and beyond the sofa I could see the 13 stairs leading upstairs to the toilet and my bedrooms.

I was bedbound and told not to climb out of bed. I eventually came to and was left with so many questions. Had I left the ward? If I had left the ward, how had I travelled and how would I get back?

I asked people in the vicinity: was I in hospital? Had I left the ward at all? Could they touch me to ground me? Could I touch them?

I have since learnt that any form of vision loss can bring on hallucinations. A lot of the hallucination studies mention Charles Bonnet, and the term Charles Bonnet Syndrome has been coined.