I want to share with everyone about the time I was introduced to acute hyponatremia. It is a name for a low-sodium condition in the body’s blood. Our bodies require a critical balance of sodium and water to help the blood do its job throughout the body especially in the brain.

One April morning in 2013 I became so weak, I was helpless. I fell on the floor and could not get back up. My legs and my arms would not work right, I rolled from side to side. I sort of rolled to get up against my easy chair but I did not have the strength to get into the chair from on the floor. I could not get a hold on that chair. The pressure on my brain prevented normal use of my arms and legs that quick. My brother and a son-in-law came to help get me up off the floor, but I was 180 pounds of dead weight. They could not get me into the chair. The ambulance was called and it took me to a hospital.

I was checked into the emergency room, lab work indicated that I had a very low-sodium condition. My sodium was well below 100. They moved me to the urgent care department started to administer I/V therapy. I was only partially conscious during all of this after I was admitted time got lost. I lost consciousness and the scary part began. My consciousness seemed to leave my body and it was moving around in different parts of the room, trying to avoid the body.The blood cell pressure in my brain at that time was causing severe pressure on all of the brain and the brain stem. I do believe it forced my consciousness from my brain and my body.

It was a terrible scary feeling like my consciousness was all alone, not wanting to go back in that body.
I kept saying to myself, I want to live and that body is dying. My consciousness moved to different parts of that room and also into the hallway and another room across the hall the first night. I felt more secure because my body wasn’t there to look at. The second day my consciousness left the hospital and that town and went to a different city and stayed there for one night then went back to the hospital to return to the body. The doctors were asking me, “Do you know where you’re at now?” “I said, I don’t know.” This went on a couple more days like consciousness would leave the body for a while and go into very unusual, undescribable places and then it would return, wanting to get back into the body. The body did not seem as if it was ready to accept consciousness back into it.

The doctors talking to each other said, “He has pneumonia now, that will not help his recovery goals. It didn’t even seem to be shocking news because I knew that body was in such bad shape. I couldn’t stay in it, somehow it seemed like I had to be free to move around until the body was well enough for me to move back in. I truly wanted to be back in the body, in the brain and being alive. I was in some state of limbo, my consciousness was not very happy about it. I wanted very badly to return to the brain and to get the body functioning right again. This went on for a whole week. The doctors asked me again, “do you know where you are at.” I said,” I’m in the veterans hospital and I told them what town.” They seemed to be quite pleased with that.

I was so weak I could not stand by myself or feed myself. They used a lift machine to get me out of the bed and onto a commode chair. I evidently didn’t need to eat, i/v tubes were running from every direction into all of my limbs. They finally put me on a liquid diet, the doctors decided I should be released into a care center where I could have 24-hour a day care. They also used a lifting device from bed to chair. I started physical therapy immediately, trying to regain some strength and within about a month I learned walking again. My balance is still bad but I regained the ability to walk.

I have no doubt, I will be labeled a complete wacko, nut case. Something in me tells me, I would have been dead if I had not followed my consciousness. We hid in storerooms and various places, even another city until the time was right to return to that body. I think we would have all died together. If we had stayed in that body.