Lyme Files: Hallucinations

Even known, I still deal with the effects of hallucinations but they were much worse once I got treatment.

When I say “Hallucinations” most people think visual ones. They are actually anywhere you can process in your brain. If that makes sense - lol. . .sense:

While the majority of hallucinations reported in primary psychotic disorders are auditory, they may also be visual, olfactory, tactile, or gustatory. Visual hallucinations have been reported in 16%–72% of patients with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder. - Visual Hallucinations: Differential Diagnosis and Treatment

Visual
I might have written before, I had some pretty weird visual ones. Every night, there was this figure in my room by my bed. I often said I could not go to sleep until I found this figure. There was no one there, of course. I assumed it was a man only because the first two hallucinations I had felt like a man and where the same figure.

Plaid-Man Shirt

After I started treatment, it turned into just a black outline of a human. I can’t see very well without glasses or contacts, so, there was never much detail.

Before treatment, the plaid-man visited me. I called him that because he wore a lumberjack black-red plaid shirt (like this one from backcountry.com).

I was sleeping on my belly and opened my eyes and he was crouched by the bed, his face about eye-level with mine. I need contacts or glasses to see, so, I couldn’t make out any features. I had enough time to push myself up and back and he was in my field of vision for a while. When I went to grab my glasses, he was gone.

It was a moment where I was scared, but, then nothing was there.

I always saw people out of the corner of my eye or standing somewhere. When I told someone, they would normally say, “Everyone thinks they see something.”

But, I would catch something out of the corner of my eye and SEE the thing in real living color. Not just a sudden flash of light from a passing car or a shadow that moved unexpectedly. Then it would go away as I was looking at it.

I was never alone.

I told my Mom this once and she was a little disturbed but when I told her it didn’t bother me overall – other than suddenly seeing something – she said maybe it was my guardian angel.

Well, my angel is a creep.

This didn’t bother me until I was on other drugs that made me paranoid, then it was a mental marathon of telling myself to relax, no one was there while the other side of my brain was telling me “they are coming for you” and “they are after you.”

I spent night in my apartment unable to sleep, unable to barricade myself and fighting against my own feelings that someone was after me. The amount of things my brain could find to be afraid of was – amazing. Zombies? Aliens? Anything. Someone. Just. .someone. Do I call 911? What was that sound? What is that not-sound? Is the figure there? Can I get out?

It’s not a way to live, let me tell you that.

Someone would say: “Amanda, you look tired.”
And I would say: “I was up all night.”
And they would say: “Wait until you have kids!”

I often saw things flying around – jacks (like knucklebones) to the point I would reach for them. One time they flew in from my window and I was trying to catch them because I knew they weren’t real but they were SO REAL and then they hit my headboard and vanished. I remember I had my hand on the headboard trying to see if I could go through the headboard or. . .if I would wake up in general. I was wide awake.

Flying through my room

I would also see the most horrible things happening to people. I would see someone trying to cross the street and my brain would play a situation of them getting hit by a car. Someone would be walking down stairs, and I would see them fall and their bodies would break apart as they fell. These things were more running behind my field of vision. But I could still see them. It was like in movies when something weird happens and then the camera cuts to the character and you see they were just imagining things.

Part of me became dull to horror in a certain way because of the amount of things my brain told me about.

Olfactory
I had a pretty fun time with smell hallucinations. I would randomly smell the most beautiful smells ever. It was something I never remembered smelling and something I have not smelled since. I spent some time trying to find it – sniffing my clothes, hair, shampoo, perfume, floor, walls, fridge. . .looking for flowers. Asking if anyone else smelled it.

It existed in my nose even if I wasn’t smelling anything.

Auditory
Amanda.

Amanda.

Amanda.

It was in this horribly deep voice. Not scary. Just a really, really deep voice. It was just someone saying my name as if he (or deep-voice she) was trying to get my attention.

This one time, the auditory and visual came together – it was the last time I saw the plaid-man. He got out of a coffin that was in my closet and I could see more clearly he was wearing the black-red plaid shirt and black pants. Maybe I freaked out a little – I remember I ran to the door and held onto the door frame and he stopped and goes, “Amanda, you know me. It’s me.”

Then he was gone.

I heard music. I heard it as if I was playing it through headphones. I remember I had a weak of Madonna’s “La Isla Bonita” on repeat. I couldn’t tell you how the song goes now.

People said they always got song stuck in their heads but this would be a start to finish song. I guess, I only ever had pieces of it or a chores or something. It was just the whole song. Pause. Whole song. Pause. Whole song.

It also wouldn’t matter what other songs I was listening to, I would still hear it.

“Sorry, can’t listen to my music today. La Isla Bonita is on repeat.”

I did hear voices. And they did tell me things. It was always a deep voice – not the same as the plaid-man’s, in this case. And always in the left back of my head. I don’t know how to explain that – it’s just where the voice was. The voice would not always be clear. It would suggest I do things like if I was at the top of the stairs, it would say, “just fall down them.” If I was on a high place it would say, “Jump.”

One time I was standing on a bridge or something and felt all tingly because I wasn’t sure if I would fall because I was so off-balance. And the voice came on saying, “Why don’t you just jump? I wonder what it would feel like. You should jump.” I knew if I jumped it would be bad but the voice made this really good argument somehow.

I didn’t jump.

The voice would pop in if I was holding something like a knife – “Stab yourself. Do it. Don’t you want to know what that would be like? I bet it's better than cutting meat. You love meat!”

And I did want to know. But, I didn’t. I just waited for La Isla Bonita to come back on.

Tactile
I think everyone with tick-borne illnesses gets this in one way or anything. You feel things on your skin. As a person with long hair, sometimes it was just a little piece of hair. Other times it might have been dry skin. I was itchy. I don’t know.

I think if you asked me honestly if I thought I had this, I don’t think I did.

Gustatory 
I often joked my illness never gave me anything cool to deal with. I still got a period with cramps, I gained weight, I had bad skin, my hair was falling out from my head and then I sprouted face and chest hair – like. . .WTF. Give me SOME perk.

Goddamn illness.

But, I’m going to say this might have been one. And only in the past year has it gone away more and more.

I would taste things. Sometimes food would tastes like what it wasn’t. I would be eating, let’s say, an apple and it would taste like marshmallow. Or drinking coffee and it would taste like a donuts.

Eating this all day

Only a few times did it not work - twice, my Mom make dinner and I remember telling her it tasted like dish washing liquid. No one else tasted it, but, I tasted lemon dish washing liquid.

Once was with lasagna and another time this potato, ham and cheese bake. I couldn’t eat them after that at all.

Turned my stomach.

More often, though, I would taste things in my mouth without eating. I don’t know if other people get that, but, I would feel all the textures, flavors and complexities of food like a ghost in my mouth. I would feel like I was eating and swallowing blueberry pie. Or suddenly taste cheese. Any food I had eaten, I would taste it as clearly as if I was eating it.

It would last for days. Most often I would taste blueberry pie, hamburger, McDonalds chicken nuggets (from my childhood), donuts, eggs and bacon, wedding cake and steak.

It did nothing for my appetite because I felt like I had been eating all day, but, it wasn’t bad. I never tasted gross things.

Other People and the Infection
I had to become two people to deal with a lot of things, including things that were really real for me. There was this reality that I lived with and the reality of what other people around me could deal with and what they lived with.

I remember when I ventured to ask if it was “normal” I got only two responses:

• The first, when it was something like the voice telling me to jump off a bridge, was that I was just a little nutty and creepy and waxing philosophically about why people jump and maybe I thought I should was weird and it was best to never mention it again. 
• The second was, “everyone has that” – which I am inclined to agree with because I will never argue with someone else’s experience – but mine was on meth or something. Sure, we all think we hear or see something from time to time or our mind plays tricks on us but mine were lingering far beyond what anyone has told me they saw.

Maybe it was angels or maybe just the result of my brain being loaded with infection and damage. I mean, once you start poking around in the brain, stuff is going to happen. All anyone has is their brain, though.

Empathy
I feel now when I see movies or TV shows people as psychotic or having some disorder most commonly called schizophrenia – I understand how it feels.

I saw the things I saw. I heard the things I heard. I heard and tasted. If someone had said, “Oh, did you see that plaid-man?” I would have said “yes.” But he wasn’t ever in everyone’s reality; he was just in my reality. All these mental disorders, people acting out “seeing things” and being “weird” by normal standards – let me tell you, it’s real for them.

It is real. In every perception and chemical in the brain – it is real.

What might have saved me from the voice or freaking out too much was that my reality was weaker than the reality of everyone around me. In the same way for 10 years I was told everything was in my head, I was faking or just looking for attention, in the same way that stole my voice from me – it saved me from listening too carefully or seeing too deeply when things got dark.

I lived off cues of others when I saw bodies hanging in retail stores or eyeballs falling out of people's faces. If no one was around and I saw or heard things, I just didn’t react because no one was there to tell me it was real.

I mean, I didn't sleep. I freaked out. I kept it inside.

After all, what if I really was sick? What would happen to me then?