Случай отравления витаминно-минеральным комплексом

When she elaborated that the experiments were taking plance in a hidden hospital annex on the other side of the picture on the wall of her room, and that her dear friend Oliver Sacks was overseeing them, her delusional state was exposed. Her lab tests showed shockingly high levels of calcium, up to 19.0 mg/dL (the normal range is 9.0 to 10.5) and vitamin D levels of 127 mg/dL (the normal range is 15 to 42). She was vitamin toxic and had likely been so for the last several months. As she weakened, she ate and drank less, but she carefully took her pills. These combined to send her vitamin levels spiraling up to life-threatening levels. Low potassium from the diuretic and not eating only worsened the toxicity. Since she hadn't seen her internist in over a year, her vitamin levels had remained untested. And when he checked them, her imperious manner and world-class medical reputation discouraged him from overriding her irrational refusal of care.

In retrospect, her decline was classic for hypercalcemia, not only the confusion progressing through delirium to stupor and toward coma, but also the weakness I had noticed when she coughed. Hypercalcemia contributed to the drooping eyelids, the nasal voice, the falls, and at the end, complete disability. Her high calcium had passed unnoticed during the first hospitalization at Christmas. Likely the doctors found confusion, weakness, and falls unremarkable in an 84-year-old and they did not look too hard for specific causes.

 Almost Losing My Mother: From Doctor to Patient and Back Again