The Delirium Wards
Seriously...
BBC
4.1 • 885 Ratings
🗓️ 24 September 2021
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ten years ago, in 2011, David Aaronovitch felt like he was losing his grip on reality. He'd been placed in a coma, after a surgery gone wrong. Now he was awake and in Intensive Care.
Every time he closed his eyes the inside of his eyelids would display a kaleidoscope of red, black and yellow violent cartoon images. Faces appeared before him like odd animation of computer game avatars. That was just the beginning. For the next four days and night David experienced what he describes as a "waking nightmare".
These types of hallucinations are called delirium and are a very common side effect of being placed in an induced coma.
Now the number of people experiencing delirium is on the rise. That's because those who are critically ill with Covid often have to be ventilated. While it helps their bodies fight the virus, and will often save their lives, the mental toll can be as serious as the physical one. Increasingly, patients are leaving hospital physically healed but mentally scarred.
In this powerful and immersive documentary David Aaronovitch hears from three people who have struggled with delirium, and shares his own experience.
Producer: Caitlin Smith Executive Producer: Peter McManus Researcher: Anna Miles Sound Design: Eloise Whitmore
With thanks to Paul Henderson, Zara Slattery, Robin Hanbury-Tenison, ICU nurse Crystal Wilson and Dr Dorothy Wade of Barking Havering and Redbridge Universities Hospital Trust and North EAst London Foundation Trust.
Image courtesy of Zara Slattery.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This was an impregnable fortress. The only way you get out was in a wooden box. |
| 0:05.0 | The controversial maximum security prison impossible to escape from. |
| 0:09.0 | And one of the duties of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.0 | The IRA inmates who found a way. of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.5 | The IRA inmates who found a way. |
| 0:14.5 | I'm Carlo Gableer and I'll be navigating a path |
| 0:19.5 | through the disturbing inside story of the biggest jailbreak in British and Irish history. |
| 0:25.0 | The narrative that they want is that this is a big achievement by them. |
| 0:28.5 | Escape from the maze, listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:35.0 | BBC Sounds. |
| 0:35.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:39.0 | Welcome to Seriously from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:42.0 | I'm Vanessa Kasule. |
| 0:44.0 | Each week this podcast brings you two of the best documentaries the audio world has to offer. |
| 0:50.0 | Next up, something powerful, unique and seriously clever. |
| 0:57.0 | Ten years ago at this same time of the year I woke up in hospital and I realized I wasn't |
| 1:06.1 | mad anymore and I remember that moment so very clearly my two brothers were sitting on either side of my hospital bed and the son was slanting in through the window behind me and I just felt this incredible relief because somehow the horror I mean the absolute terror |
| 1:25.7 | that I've been living through for almost a week had evaporated. I won't forget the |
| 1:31.9 | relief and I certainly won't forget those days and nights of |
| 1:34.6 | hallucination and delusion which taught me something I don't think I've ever |
| 1:39.2 | properly understood about delirium and it made me realize something else too. The line between being |
| 1:46.5 | mentally ill and mentally well is so fine, so delicate. Ever since that trauma, that really is the word I felt a need to find out more |
... |
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