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Panicked during a macabre hallucination, a fifty-year-old English woman realized at the hospital that her nightmare was due to a clinical trial carried out on her brain 10 years earlier.
Absolute horror upon waking up. According to the British daily Metro, Sharon Martin, a 54-year-old woman woke up one morning convinced that she had killed her husband. The reality was ultimately due to a clinical trial on his brain.
A vision of horror when you wake up
That morning, in July 2021, Sharon wakes up and sees blood as far as the eye can see, on her bed, her floor, her walls. “I woke up around 6 a.m. to take my medicine, but I thought I had killed my husband. I saw his body, the gun, the blood – it was like a scene out of a movie. I was just screaming, “Chris, did I shoot you?” I could see everything”, bears witness to this in everyday life. The latter, completely alive but frightened, wakes up to the sound of his wife’s cries, and rushes her to the hospital.
A clinical trial on his brain at stake?
Quickly taken care of by the medical team, they noticed the presence of fluid and a cyst in the brain of the fifty-year-old and made a link with an intervention 7 years earlier. Indeed, in 2014, Sharon participated in clinical trials on her brain in order to test the effects of treatment on her Parkinson’s disease. She then received several injections of a growth protein. A trial which was favorable to him (his symptoms were easing) but which was quickly aborted. “The trial failed because we couldn’t meet the target – it was supposed to show a 20% difference between all participants in the results and it didn’t.“, explains the patient.
However, a report indicates in his file that an infection took hold in his brain because of the system used as part of the clinical trial. Sharon had the entire system removed, but now discovers that the follow-up was not sufficient. “The doctor who took care of my Parkinson’s told me he thought I had a brain tumor. Then they told me I had a brain infection with fluid and a cyst on my brain that they said was inoperable. The whole system was removed, but no one ever said the fluid and cyst were gone – I have no idea.”
An oversight which, this morning in July 2021, turned into a horror film organized by its own brain. “I thought I was going crazy.”
Possible consequences, inherent to the trials, for doctors
Today, the patient assures that she had given her consent for the clinical trial but that she thought there would be follow-up. Contacted by the daily, the team which carried out the medical trial was keen to provide a response, which was not the most reassuring.
“We are truly sorry to hear about this individual’s concerns and encourage them to contact us directly so that we can appropriately look into the issues they have raised,” she mentions without intending to give confidential details. Regretting the emergence of negative consequences, the team continues: “We thank Sharon and everyone involved in life-saving trials, because without them we would be unable to find better treatments and ultimately a cure for Parkinson’s.”
Not sure that Sharon, in the name of science, wants to repeat the experiment.
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