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Brain on fire
I was told I was having a breakdown and was sectioned – the reality was even more terrifying
A HOSPITAL WORKER was sectioned and told she was having a breakdown when she was really suffering from a rare brain infection.
Stacey Drummond, 33, called cops and claimed she was being stalked by a weirdo who was posting chocolate bars through her door.
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Her behaviour got very strange and increasingly violent and aggressive but repeated tests couldn’t find anything medically wrong with her.
She was locked up in a mental health hospital but after Stacey made a heartbreaking plea for help her sister Nicola, 36, kept pushing doctors to hunt for causes.
Eventually they realised they’d missed something in a test and Stacey, from Dundee, was diagnosed with one of the rarest brain diseases in the world.
She’s now on the slow road to recovery after a nightmare year but reckons she owes everything to her sister and the rest of the family.
Stacey said: “Nicola definitely saved my life. I might not be here today if it wasn’t for her.
“I feel so lucky that I had her in my corner fighting for me.
“It’s not the hospital’s fault, they just didn’t know what they were dealing with.
“But if it wasn’t for Nicola I don’t know what would have happened to me. I might still be locked in a ward somewhere.”
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In February, Stacey had just moved to a new flat months on from a devastating break-up when she noticed everything slowing down as she watched the telly.
Then she reckoned someone was staring into her flat and sending her fast food.
Her worried sister thought all this was real and got her to call in police.
Stacey said: “I remember just seeing someone outside my door and hearing my doorbell going. It kept going.
“I’d not long moved in and I was getting scared. It wasn’t real. It was just that my brain wasn’t working properly.
"I called the police and one of them asked if I’d been taking drugs.”
The officers contacted Stacey’s GP and she got a mental health check.
But she started suffering fits and seizures as well as bizarre episodes where she rattled off information and numbers.
After one terrifying incident she made a desperate plea for help.
Nicola said: “There would be five or six hours of the day where she would be someone else. I was really scared.
“One night I lay on the bed with her and she asked: ‘Am I going to die’?
“I told her not to be ridiculous and that we would figure out what was happening.
“Stacey begged me for help. She said she knew something wasn’t right and she could feel it in her body.”
A two week stay at Ninewells Hospital, where she worked, led to her getting another clean bill of health despite a barrage of tests.
Nicola reckoned staff got fixated on her break-up and she was sectioned and locked up in Carseview Hospital, Dundee.
Then came the call from Ninewells that changed everything. Medics noticed a small amount of fluid in the results of a lumbar puncture test that they had missed before.
Stacey’s blood cell count was wrong and the doctors reckoned there was a chance she might have Anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis.
The chances of catching the auto-immune disease are less than one-in-a-million and only one other person had ever been treated for it at the hospital.
The horrific condition turns the person’s immune system against their own body.
Nicola said: “They told me that she would have to be one of the unluckiest people in the world to catch it.
“They couldn’t tell me much because everything they knew was coming from Google.
“But they agreed she was being treated in the wrong hospital and got her out of there. We were very naive because we thought that was the end.”
Stacey started on a high dose of steroids that made her extremely aggressive and obsessed with food.
She would try and dupe pals into ordering her McDonald’s and would search parents Grant and Maureen's house for food.
As weeks passed and there was no improvement her sister kept researching and tracked down the father of an American victim.
He told Nicola that Stacey might have a tumour and she should urge medics to look for that.
But her sister was so violent and uncontrollable that she had to be slapped in handcuffs by cops as she tried to escape the hospital.
After being knocked out and put on a ventilator docs discovered a non-cancerous tumour on her ovary that was driving the infection.
She got an emergency op and the video above shows her getting back on her feet after weeks of being knocked out.
But when she came round she still wasn’t herself and kept attacking relatives and staff.
Stacey was sent back to Carseview Hospital and locked in a ward once again.
After weeks locked up she was allowed home visits and started to make a remarkable recovery.
Her memory gradually started coming back and she’s started doing a couple of hours a week at work. And she made sure she got her McDonald’s.
Stacey said: “I feel like I’ve gone to sleep for six months and woke up fat. I don’t really remember all that much about it.
“My sister jokes with me and says I’m okay if that’s all I have to worry about. Everyone else went through it really.
“I’ve missed out on a year but although I look different I feel the same as I did before.”
Nicola is on a drive to ensure everyone is aware of the condition to try and spare families the heartache she went through.
She said: “It’s just a simple test to diagnose it.
“Would they have spotted it quicker in Stacey if they’d known what they were looking for? We’ll never know.
“But if it had been picked up in the beginning Stacey might never have got to the extreme levels that she did.”
The ordeal has brought the family closer together and they’ve vowed to learn lessons from what they went through.
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Nicola said: “We’ve all got a different outlook now. Life is far too short for silly arguments or anything like that. You have no idea what is round the corner.”
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