Len is a 40 year old male recent photography school grad living in Morehead City. He was recently hospitalized for nearly 6 weeks in the New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, half of that time in critical care and half in a step-down unit. His primary diagnosis was acute pancreatitis. For the first two and a half weeks he was in acute DT's as well. During that time he was difficult to manage by the nursing staff because of continuous efforts to escape, pulling out tubes repeatedly and fighting day and night to escape. He was tied down hands and feet and across the abdomen, and yet pulled out the NG tubing many times.
When he regained consciousness, he said that he felt he was in a life and death struggle in a ship, surrounded by creatures that wanted to kill him, including many skeletons. He felt that he had wrecked our family sailboat and was encountering numerous dangerous people, and he struggled mightily against them. This struggle was waged for two and a half weeks.
He has not wanted to revisit these memories, which he refers to as “nightmares.” He rarely talked about them, and we in his family didn't know the powerful effect that the memories were having on his recovery.
When Len came to the iRest workshop, he had been discharged from the hospital for nearly a month, and learning to deal with constant abdominal pain and is learning to manage the diabetes. He came to the workshop on recommendation of his father who had attended a workshop a few days earlier.
Len reports that as soon as the relaxation began he immediately felt that he was back in the critical care unit, tied down hands and feet, and was totally back into the nightmare. The only difference was that he realized that he could in fact escape. He was sweaty, panicky, and decided within a few moments to leave the workshop, that it was too soon for him to be going through this. The eye pillows which had been placed on his eyes became a significant control issue. He could in fact control this one part of the experience, so he removed the eye pillows and he reports that that helped him deal with the situation.
He also says that the voice of the iRest leader helped lure him into the nightmare. Hers was a soothing, feminine voice, like the voices of the nurses in the critical care unit during his ordeal. The quiteness also contributed.
As Len prepared to leave the workshop just after it began, he began experimenting with giving himself a few more minutes at the time. The realization that he could in fact leave the nightmare this time, whereas he couldn't exit the hospital because of being tied down, seemed significant.
Gradually, Len reports, he was able to give himself more and more time without making an exit. He was able to relax, but only a little. He feels that it is remarkable that he was able to get back into the nightmare and find a way out of it. He told me, his father, that he knows now that he can handle this, and that if the opportunity to take the workshop arises again he would like to be part of it. He feels that it is important in his recovery to come to terms with his horrific experience. He remains totally surprised that this experience surfaced almost immediately and he was able to remain in the room and deal with the painful memories.
The Thomas family regards this as an enormous move in the right direction, and an example of a non-invasive clinical intervention that has yielded positive results above all expectation. We hope that it will be possible for these experiences to be continued. We are profoundly grateful to Yoga for You for providing the iRest workshop, and to Cheryl LeClair for her splendid preparation and leadership.