I would rather kill myself with high doses of morphine than of water
What, you think I want to drink myself to death? :-)
My wife almost went the water route. Discovered Crystal Lite, fell in love with it, drank several gallons in a few hours. That evening she started acting and talking weird. Well, weirder than normal. :-)
It got so bad that, while I had no idea what was going wrong, something clearly was and I took her to the emergency room. While laying on a gurney there, she had a grand mal epileptic seizure (she doesn't have epilepsy). About the same time, the lab results from blood tests came back. Hyponatremia. She had washed out so much sodium that her serum sodium level was at critically low levels. The levels inside her cells was still about normal, but the surrounding fluid was way low, so water was migrating from her extracellular fluids into the cells, causing swelling. (DON'T TELL Karma ABOUT THIS! I'm sure it has something to do with the ME crisis!)
For most organs and tissues, that's not particularly important, but for your brain it's disaster. When the brain swells, it's got only one place to go. It tries to push itself through that small hole at the base of the skull where the spinal cord exits. Ain't gonna work.
It actually is a medical emergency and can kill in a few hours if not reversed.
When the blood results were back, the doctors started a sodium drip and began reversing the process. She still spent a day and a half in Intensive Care, though. |
