The Forest of Revolving Nightmares : a personal account of experiencing delirium

Dr Sharmella Summan

If you would indulge me in setting the scene for you: six years ago I was at a terribly low point in my life. I had lost sight that anything could be different from the hollowed out emptiness that had taken residence inside the core of my being. It hadn't always been an emptiness. Before that, it was a thing that ached with sorrow; like a black ball I carried around in the pit of my stomach for as long as I could remember.

I called it my monster.

It was a time before we had made friends and I had understood how it had been spawned, had protected me and the wisdom it contained. The emptiness, was somehow worse than its preceding perpetual sadness. A hopeless terrain is the driest desert of all. I made the quiet, resolved decision that it would be best for me and everyone around me if I simply wasn't here anymore. I did a very good job of convincing myself of this lie. Scouring through greyed-out memories in the Filofax of my mind and cherry-picking those to confirm that I had always felt out of place anyway. No great loss. Putting right a blip in the fabric of the universe; cutting out the wrong stitch and allowing the time space continuum to carry on seamlessly. This frame of mind really does put oneself at the centre of things. A distorted and self absorbed world view had taken over. In the August of 2019 I attempted to take my own life. Thankfully, I failed. For that; I am grateful every day.

My recovery involved a time in the ITU and an experience of delirium on waking in to what would become my new life. Here I attempt to describe how it felt to be in this temporary altered state. In every iteration of telling this story the porter remains a pivotal role and I will always be grateful for the moment he took to simply orientate me. The doctors and nurses saved my life. The porter soothed my despairing soul. My family, despite my initial resistance, loved my heart back together.

So, here goes:

An empty, dark emergency room. Some time ago this room was full of doctors and nurses in finely tuned frantic action saving a life. The floor is littered with empty plastic wrappers of hastily opened needles, tubes and syringes. There is a eerie quality of a long abandoned hospital that the wind blows through. This image haunts me. Was I here? Were they saving my life? Is this an image from a job I had or a book I read or a film I watched? There is no one there to ask.

With a sudden flash of clarity, I remember where I am again, who I am again and with a thud...what happened again. I remember the bright flashing lights, the tubes in my arms, the bleeping machines and what they all mean about where I am and what’s happened.

I must not lose my way back to the underneath again. There I am lost between worlds. There are no constellations of old, wise guiding lights in the sky like bright little gifts from the past to hold my hand on the way home. I don’t know if I’m in my body or outside of it. I am floating above the scene of my own life. I don’t know which of the things that I’m seeing are real and which are scenes from one of the other worlds that seem to have  superimposed themselves over this one. Melting in to each other all whilst moving in and out of time and focus. As if infinite horror movies were playing over the top of each other on the same projector screen. All starting and ending and looping round at different times.

I try to tell the real people to bring me back, to send me an anchor or a tether to keep me safe with them but as soon as the clarity comes, it’s gone. All I managed to say was a jumble of words that cause them to look back at me with a piercing and terrifying combination of concern, care and fear. As a doctor, I was on the other side of this hospital bed dynamic once and now I can’t even hear the words that are tumbling out of my own mouth and rolling slowly down in to an abyss. I recoil in shame for the suffering I am causing and want to push them all away for their own sakes. And so the cycle went.

I feel like I’m stuck in the murky bog of eternal stench. Or wading through metres of moss and dense undergrowth in a ten thousand year old forest dripping with lush heavy foliage that in turn is thick with plenty of places to hide. Flickering movements tantalise and torture my nervous system whilst the unknown predator sirens her calls of danger in the depths of night just as the deepest of fogs is descending. No map. No torch. No friend. No strength. No way home.

A moment of reprieve comes. A gentle hand reaches through the darkness and lays itself on my contracted soul. A porter tells me what is happening in drip feed. And like watching the drip that’s going into my arm it comforts me. Slow, plodding, plinking predictability. It is the only speed at which my weary spirit can digest incoming information in to anything resembling meaning right now. “You are sick, you are in hospital, we are looking after you” he says. Sounds like a lullaby in his rhythmic Scouse accent. I want to hug him and never let him go. I don’t want to get lost there again. Keep me safe with you I plead inside.

I wonder if the porter in his sage green NHS logo shirt and navy combats was real at all or if I hallucinated the thing I wanted like a big kind gift to myself. The tether thins and I feel the moss beneath my feet again, I hear the slippery hiss in the silence, something brushes against my skin, the fog descends and grips my throat.

I feel naked and exposed. A cockroach that has molted her exoskeleton. Found herself alone away from the comfort of the colony that are huddled together on the underside of a dank mossy log on the forest floor. Maybe I’ll emerge stronger and closer to adult size next time. Fully grown and equipped for the world. Maybe everything won’t hurt so much. I catch myself, hope is a dangerous game. This isn’t ecdysis, you are not actually a cockroach. I don’t think. I can’t be sure. Is this a Kafka style story? Maybe that would be better than the truth.

I have come to see myself as forever lost in the density between the trees, held in place by creeping vines. Knowing some thing is wrong and not knowing how to figure out what that thing is. How can you make right that which you don't know is wrong? The answers all seems so obvious to the blue uniforms pressing buttons, attending to machines that bleep and counting the various functions of my body.

“Functional paralysis” they’ll shout.

“Tied herself up with the vines we sent to tether her; can’t even open her eyes to see the map, the compass, the loving guides and the dawn breaking."

I would feel defeated if it wasn’t for a quiet loyal will that is lovingly keeping me alive.

“It won’t always be like this” I hear in hushed tones through the background forest din and bleeping machines.

A lifeline. I'm hitching a ride back on that soft scouse hum. I can't explain it but there is a part of me that seems to understand that I am in a process of metamorphosis, much like the quiet miracle inside a chrysalis. My liquid state and absence of edges leaves me tender and vulnerable. I feel far too exposed for people to see me. Yet, here I am surrounded by strangers and loved ones and bright bright lights arranged around this bed with cot sides as if my pain is centre stage and I can't be trusted to stay in place for the viewing. The enzymes this caterpillar once used to digest food are now eating me from the inside out so that I can rearrange the constituent parts and emerge as a new butterfly.

This misjudged end meets a beginning and in between is a shadow land. A land that promises rich, fertile soil for new growth if I'm brave enough to dig deep in to it's offering and learn to love all of the critters, be they soft or spiky, that make up it's diverse biome. It is all life. Life that is in beautiful symbiosis. An interconnectedness that is lovingly there even when we are in resistance to it.

I love the forest these days. It feels like home. Even in the dark. I love her shadows and the beams of sunlight that pierce the forest floor through the gaps in all that lush foliage. Now, I listen out for every noise she makes with curiosity. I have fallen in love with learning about the trees, plants, fungi and soil that are part of her ecosystem. Those that are important food for the caterpillars, butterflies and cockroaches and those that are medicines for us. Sometimes, on tender days I take myself to the woods, rest my weight against a tree and imagine that kind porter telling me everything is okay.